The Daily Deep Dive with Jocelyn Nicole Johnson

Jocelyn Nicole Johnson is the author of My Monticello, five stories and a novella all set in Virginia, selected by National Book award winner Charles Yu as his most anticipated book for the year, and finalist for the Kirkus Prize. A fellow at TinHouse, Hedgebrook and VCCA,

Johnson’s writing has appeared in Guernica, The Guardian, Kweli, Joyland, Phoebe, Shenandoah, Prime Number Magazine, y en otros lugares.

Her short story “Control Negro” was anthologized in Best American Short Stories 2018, guest edited by Roxane Gay, who called it, “one hell of a story” and read live by LeVar Burton as part of PRI’s Selected Shorts series.

A veteran public school art teacher, Johnson lives and writes in Charlottesville, Virginia.

ABOUT THE BOOK – MY MONTICELLO
A young woman descended from Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings driven from her neighborhood by a white militia.

A university professor studying racism by conducting a secret social experiment on his own son. A single mother desperate to buy her first home even as the world hurtles toward catastrophe. Each fighting to survive in America.

Tough-minded, vulnerable, and brave, Jocelyn Nicole Johnson’s precisely imagined debut explores burdened inheritances and extraordinary pursuits of belonging.

Set in the near future, the eponymous novella, “My Monticello,” tells of a diverse group of Charlottesville neighbors fleeing violent white supremacists.

Led by Da’Naisha, a young Black descendant of Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings, they seek refuge in Jefferson’s historic plantation home in a desperate attempt to outlive the long-foretold racial and environmental unravelling within the nation.