Kirk Wallace Johnson
Kirk Wallace Johnson is an author and screenwriter. His books include The Feather Thief: Beauty, Obsession, and the Natural History Heist of the Century and To Be a Friend is Fatal: the Fight to Save the Iraqis America Left Behind. He is also the creator of Drug Spies, a scripted series about pharmaceutical espionage. His writing has appeared in The New Yorker, The New York Times, The Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post Magazine, The Wall Street Journal and Foreign Policy, among others.
Johnson served in Iraq with the U.S. Agency for International Development in Baghdad and then Fallujah as the Agency’s first coordinator for reconstruction in the war-torn city. He is a senior fellow at the USC Annenberg Center on Communication Leadership and Policy and the recipient of fellowships from the American Academy in Berlin, Yaddo, MacDowell and the Wurlitzer Foundation. He appeared at the 2019 RMWF.
Johnson’s gripping new book (being released in August 2022), The Fishermen and the Dragon, depicts a community set on fire by hatred, xenophobia and ecological disaster. Drawing upon a trove of never-before-published material, case files and interviews with Klansmen, shrimpers, law enforcement, environmental activists, lawyers, perpetrators and victims, Johnson uncovers secrets and secures confessions to crimes that went unsolved for more than forty years. It’s a story that braids corporate malfeasance with a battle over shrinking natural resources, at a turning point in the modern white supremacist movement, and highlights one woman’s relentless battle for environmental justice.
The first 200 attendees will receive a free copy of Johnson’s new book, The Fishermen and the Dragon.
This event will be live streaming. WATCH HERE.
