The Art of the Short Story: Toni Ann Johnson on Light Skin Gone to Waste with Nina Lorez Collins

In Conversation

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  Toni Ann Johnson

  Toni Ann Johnson

  Toni Ann Johnson won the Flannery O’Connor Award for short fiction with her linked story collection Light Skin Gone to Waste, which was selected for the prize and edited by Roxane Gay. She’s an NAACP Image Award nominee for Outstanding Literary Work by a Debut Author for her novel, Remedy For a Broken Angel (Nortia Press, 2014). A novella, Homegoing, released in May of 2021, won Accents Publishing’s inaugural novella contest as well as the Grand Prize for short literary works at the Chanticlear International Book Awards. Johnson won the Miller Audio Prize for prose with a recorded performance of her short story “Time Travel.” Short fiction and essays have appeared in many publications including the L.A. Times, the Emerson Review, Hunger Mountain, Callaloo, and the Coachella Review where her story “Daughtered Out” was nominated for a Pushcart Prize. She currently teaches fiction and screenwriting at Antioch University Los Angeles where she earned her MFA in Creative Writing.

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  Nina Lorez Collins

  Nina Lorez Collins

  Nina Lorez Collins is the Chief Creative Officer for Hello Revel, the events and community platform for women over 40, as well as the founder of The Woolfer, which Revel acquired in 2021. Her book, What Would Virginia Woolf Do? And Other Questions I Ask Myself As I Attempt to Age Without Apology, was published in April 2018. She’s a graduate of Barnard College, has a Masters degree from Columbia in the field of Narrative Medicine, and a long professional background in book publishing, both as a literary scout and then as an agent. Nina is the board chair of the Brooklyn Public Library as well as a trustee of the publishing house Spiegel & Grau. In addition to her work at Revel, she manages the literary estate of her late mother, the filmmaker and writer Kathleen Collins. She has four grown children and lives in Brooklyn.