David William Johnson is a former journalist who writes on American roots music. He also writes fiction, poetry, and songs. His article on the Carter Family was selected for Da Capo’s Best American Music Writing 2004. In 2013, the University Press of Mississippi published his biography of old-time country musicians Carter and Ralph Stanley, Lonesome Melodies: The Lives and Music of the Stanley Brothers. The book was nominated for three awards. He contributed articles on the Stanley Brothers to the Journal of Country Music and International Country Music Journal.
Johnson's MacDowell-supported project, The Life and Music of Booker "Bukka" White, is a biography of Mississippi blues musician Booker "Bukka" White, whom he interviewed in a Massachusetts hospital in July 1976. His article on the interview and questionable medical care available to White when he returned to Memphis appeared in the 2010 special music issue of Southern Cultures, published by the Center for the Study of the American South in Chapel Hill.
“The time away from distractions made possible by the MacDowell Fellowship gave me the boost I needed to draft the early chapters of the book,” Johnson said after his residency. He is a 1968 graduate of Harvard College, and in 2015 received a doctorate in English literature from Indiana University of Pennsylvania. He lives in Stratham, NH.
