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, and elsewhere.

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.