Author Interview – Rick Johnson

What is your favourite food? I like a lot of different foods but what I love is to savour it, share it, and make an experience of it with loved ones.

What’s your favourite place in the entire world? In a hug, especially my wife’s. Geographically, I really enjoyed southern Japan when I lived there for a few months, but I think my home in Winnipeg Beach, Manitoba, Canada, is my favourite place to be.

How has your upbringing influenced your writing? I think, profoundly. I am one of eight children in a very poor and struggling family. Thankfully, we had a very loving, accepting, non-judging mother and a perpetually committed and hard working father. The sibling competition made me strive for attention, which I achieved through academic achievement above all my siblings (at least formally-speaking). I took solace early on in a love of reading and writing, and I also saw how different personalities (my brothers and sisters) experienced life and wanted to understand everyone and explain the world to them, so I wrote down my thoughts a lot in trying to figure things out for myself and then to be able to share and help others close to me. Still do….

When and why did you begin writing? I started really “feeling” my writing in late high school and then was actually a little surprised in university that I was getting good marks on essays. That was partly because my best high school grades were actually in math and the sciences. But anyway, I started to find my voice in university and I have been writing ever since, primarily as a journalist.

What inspires you to write and why? In the past I was usually inspired by the issues of the day and wrote editorials on a variety of things but I have been gravitating to human rights, disability, love, and spirituality kinds of things the older I get.

What genre are you most comfortable writing? Personal experience, persuasive pieces… I guess because of my many years writing editorials for newspapers.

What inspired you to write your first book? It was a kind of catharsis. I had dabbled with the story of my life with disability and trauma in the family but it was painful to relive in the writing. Finally, though, I got that first book together. I should have, could have done a few sequels but, again, it’s very painful because in writing it you have to relive it.