Rheta
Grimsley Johnson 1954
Major Works
- Enchanted Evening Barbie and the Second Coming
2010
- Poor Man's Provence: Finding Myself in Cajun
Louisiana, 2008
- Good Grief: The Story of Charles M. Schulz,
1989
- They Didn't Put That on the Huntley-Brinkley!:
A Vagabond Reporter Encounters the New South
Hunter James and Rheta Grimsley Johnson, 1993
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Photos of Rheta Grimsley Johnson by Nancy Jacobs
Rheta
Grimsley Johnson : A Biography
Mississippi writer Rheta Grimsley Johnson is an award-winning
reporter, columnist, and travelogue/memoir writer. Her most
recent book, Poor Man's Provence: Finding Myself
in Cajun Louisiana (2008), is
a memoir by Johnson describing her love affair with the Cajun
country of Southwest Louisiana.
 Born
in 1954, Johnson is a native of Colquitt, Georgia, but she grew
up in Montgomery, Alabama, and later lived with her husband
Don in Iuka, Mississippi. She studied journalism at Auburn University
and graduated in 1977 from Auburn University. She was the winner
of the 1974-75 National Pacemaker Award while on the staff of
The Auburn Plainsman. A reporter
and columnist for The Commercial Appeal
in Memphis, Tennessee, and Scripps Howard News Service from
1980 until 1994 when she joined the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
She worked for Atlanta seven years.
Over the years she has won numerous other awards for her writing
including the Ernie Pyle Memorial Award for human interest reporting
in 1983, the Headliner Award for commentary in 1985, the American
Society of Newspaper Editors’ Distinguished Writing Award
for commentary in 1982, and in 1986 she was inducted into the
Scripps Howard Newspapers Editorial Hall of Fame. In 1991 Johnson
was one of three finalists for the Pulitzer Prize for commentary.
Today Johnson's column appears in about fifty newspapers nationwide
and is syndicated by King Features of New York.
 Johnson
wrote America’s Faces in 1987.
She wrote Good Grief,The
Story of Charles M. Schulz in 1989. In 2000 she
wrote the text for a book of photographs entitled Georgia,
and her current book appeared in 2008.
She was once married to Jimmy Johnson, creator of the comic
strip Arlo and Janis. She then married journalism professor
Don Grierson, and she and her husband Don lived in Iuka, Mississippi,
with three dogs and two cats, until his recent death. They also
purchased a second home in Henderson, Louisiana, on the edge
of the Atchafalaya Swamp.
Johnson's newest book Enchanted Evening Barbie
and the Second Coming (2010) is a "frank,
exhilarating, wise, poignant, and brave memoir. Her experiences
range from childhood memories of ritual pre-interstate trips
in the family station wagon to visit foot-washing Baptist relatives
to young-girl
fixations on the Barbie dolls of the title, from the simultaneous
exuberance and proto-feminist doubts of young marriage to the
aches of loves lost through divorce and death." (from publisher's
description). Johnson's journalism career, which began on her
college newspaper and rural weeklies and moved on to prestigious
big-city dailies, has been punctuated by her distinctive writing
voice and a knack for revealing her much-loved South through
uncommon stories about its common people, and her stories of
life in the South ring true to her many fans.
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A
Review
Interview
with
Norview yeRelated
Wtes
Photo
of Rheta Grimsley Johnson by Nancy N. Jacobs
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