E. K. Johnston

Emily Kate Johnston, who publishes as E.K. Johnston, is a Canadian author and forensic archaeologist.^[1]

Career[]

Johnston started writing fan fiction in 2002, and wrote her first manuscript in 2009.^[2] Her first book, The Story of Owen: Dragon Slayer of Trondheim, was published in 2014, and is set in an alternate present-day Ontario where dragons are both real and a menace. The review in The New York Times called the book "a clever first step in the career of a novelist who [...] has many more songs to sing",^[3] it was nominated for the William C. Morris Award in 2015.^[1] A sequel, Prairie Fire, followed in 2015.

Johnston's third book was A Thousand Nights, a retelling of One Thousand and One Nights. C.S. Lewis's descriptions of the desert in The Horse and His Boy inspired Johnston in writing her own novel set in the desert.^[4] A companion book, Spindle, followed in 2016, which was a reinterpretation of Sleeping Beauty.^[5]

Her fifth novel, Exit, Pursued By A Bear, was published in 2016. Inspired by Shakespeare's The Winter's Tale, it tells the story of cheer-leading captain Hermione Winters, who discovers she is pregnant after being sexually assaulted at a camp party. It was written partially as a challenge, and partially as a response to Stephen Woodworth's 2013 bill to re-criminalise abortion.^[6] It was named a "Book of the Year" by several organisations, including NPR,^[7] Publishers Weekly,^[8] and the New York Public Library.^[9] It won the Canadian Children's Book Centre's Amy Mathers Teen Book Award in 2017.^[10]

A Star Wars fan,^[11] Johnston was asked to write a book on the character Ahsoka Tano. Published in October 2016,^[12] Ahsoka fills in the gap between her appearances in The Clone Wars and Rebels. Her second Star Wars novel, Queen's Shadow, was released in March 2019.^[13] Featuring Padme Amidala, Queen's Shadow is set in the years between the events of The Phantom Menace and Attack of the Clones.^[14] Additionally, she has also written the story By Whatever Sun, focusing on Miara Larte, a character Johnston created within Ahsoka, and set during the events of A New Hope.

Johnston describes her novel That Inevitable Victorian Thing as a "Near-future Sci-fi Canadian Idealistic Romance",.^[15] It was published in 2017.

She credits her discipline in academic writing for helping her time management while writing prose; and states she is a fast writer - she wrote A Thousand Nights in "about 20 days",^[2] and writes with little disturbance. She advises early and young writers to learn to finish projects as practice in self-discipline and editing.^[6]

Her favourite authors are Jo Graham, Elizabeth Wein, Tessa Gratton, Kiersten White, Madeleine L'Engle, JRR Tolkien, David Eddings, CS Lewis,^[2] and Holly Black.^[1] She plays the alto saxophone and the clarinet.^[1]

Johnston released another Star Wars novel, Queen's Peril, on June 2, 2020.^[16]

Bibliography[]

Novels[]

• The Story of Owen: Dragon Slayer of Trondheim (2014)
• Prairie Fire (2015)
• A Thousand Nights (2015)
• Spindle (2016) - also published as Kingdom of Sleep
• Exit, Pursued By A Bear (2016)
• That Inevitable Victorian Thing (2017)
• The Afterward (2019)
• Aetherbound (2021)

Short Stories[]

• Work In Progress (2017) in Three Sides of A Heart: Stories about Love Triangles, edited by Natalie Parker

Star Wars[]

• Ahsoka (2016)
• "By Whatever Sun" (2017), short story in From A Certain Point Of View
• Queen's Shadow (2019)
• Queen's Peril (2020)
• Queen’s Hope (2021)

Awards[]

• 2015: William C. Morris Award, shortlist (The Story of Owen: Dragon Slayer of Trondheim)
• 2017: Amy Mathers Teen Book Award in 2017, winner (Exit, Pursued By A Bear)

References[]