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SJNY’S Storyteller: Lee Clay Johnson

The award-winning novelist has been instrumental in growing SJNY’s Writers Foundry
By Valerie Esposito-Saadat
A portrait of Lee Clay Johnson, a man with light brown hair and a slight beard, is seen wearing a brown shirt and a gray herringbone blazer suit; He is leaning against a weathered wooden wall and has his hands resting inside the pockets of his blue denim jeans
Photo by Sasha Wiseman
Growing up in Tennessee in a family of bluegrass musicians, novelist Lee Clay Johnson did not grow up in a literary world, but rather surrounded by storytellers who, along with his first creative writing course in college, helped determine his future career path.

Now an award-winning author and director of the Brooklyn Writers Foundry, the Brooklyn Campus’ MFA in Creative Writing program, Johnson also serves as an assistant teaching professor for the program, teaching graduate-level fiction writing workshops and mixed-genre craft classes, and advising student theses. In addition, he founded the program’s literary journal, Writer’s Foundry Review.

“I’m a first-generation college graduate, so I have a deep appreciation for what a liberal arts education can bring into someone’s life,” said Johnson. “I love sharing knowledge and imparting wisdom while building a supportive and harmonious community. That’s what teaching’s all about.”

After graduating from the University of Virginia with a Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing in 2011, Johnson worked in a series of visiting writer and adjunct instructor positions before finding his way to St. Joseph’s in 2017. He was originally an adjunct professor, teaching courses for the MFA and ACES (Academic Center for English Language Studies) programs, as well as pre-college summer classes on the Brooklyn Campus.

“I’m a first-generation college graduate, so I have a deep appreciation for what a liberal arts education can bring into someone’s life.”
“I knew that I loved teaching, probably because it had had such an invaluable impact on me as a student and young writer,” he said. “When I was invited to St. Joseph’s, I loved the diverse community, the level of intellectual curiosity and artistic ambition so much, that I decided to stick around and help grow the MFA program.”

In addition to his work with the MFA program, Johnson is the author of two novels: “Nitro Mountain” (Knopf, 2016), which won the Sue Kaufman Prize for First Fiction from the American Academy of Arts & Letters, and “Bloodline” (Panamerica, 2025). His fiction and nonfiction have appeared in County Highway, The Southampton Review, Ploughshares, Lit Hub, Oxford American, The Common, Appalachian Heritage, Salamander, and Mississippi Review, among other publications.

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