Who is this woman?


N. J. Johnston grew up on a farm in the hills of northwestern Connecticut, which is home base again after years of travel. It all started when I spent my senior year of high school in Norway as an American Field Service (AFS) student. It was an experience for which I will forever be grateful.

"You write well," people said all through my early education, and later, college in Wisconsin. They said the same during the years I was a wife and mother in Oregon--as well as, a rancher and production typist for research psychologists. That I was facile with words I took for granted, but my first love was travel.

I finished a B.S. at the University of Oregon and stayed on for a M.S. in Interdisciplinary Studies, specifically, English, Political Science and International Studies. I sidled up to a writing life by attending Radcliffe's Publishing Procedures Course at Radcliffe in the summer of 1988. Returning to Oregon inspired, I started representing aspiring writers as a literary agent, while earning my daily bread teaching at the UofO and advising student writers. After a while, with a nest egg and an empty nest, I decided to take the plunge. I moved to Seattle, for no reason other than that I liked the city, and hustled freelance work for a couple of years. I nearly starved to death. So, in 1995, when the man in my life asked me to cruise the Pacific on his 34-foot sailboat, I was packed overnight and ready to go.

During the trip, I wrote a series of articles for a Seattle sailing magazine. In May 1997, when we reached Australia, my mind was whirling with all I had experienced so I decided to come back to my roots in New England to teach and write.