Novelist, cartoonist, literary scholar, and philosopher, Charles Johnson is the author of 25 books, including Night Hawks, The Way of the Writer, and Middle Passage, which won the National Book Award. He is a MacAurthur fellow and recipient of the Arts and Letters Award in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Science. His forthcoming graphic novel, with Steven Barnes, The Eightfold Path, interweaves Buddhist teachings and Afrofuturism.