Chad Thomas Johnston: BIO

Chad Thomas Johnston is an author, sonuva’ preacha’ man, PhD-dropout, singer/songwriter, daydreaming doodler, publicist, PUN-isher, mixtape maker, & pop-culture junkie. He is represented by Seattle, WA-based literary agent Jenée Arthur, who is currently shopping his manuscript, The Stained-Glass Kaleidoscope: Essays at Play in the Churchyard of the Mind, to major publishing houses. Chad lives in Lawrence, KS with his wife, Rebekah Christine, their diaper-destroying daughter Baby Evie, and five felines.

Chad’s semi-illustrious writing career began in 1987 in his elementary school days. He wrote and bound books by hand with Christmas wrapping paper, and regularly lent the resulting tomes to his peers as if he had his own private library. Titillating titles such as Blood Tales and Robocop (which surprisingly did not result in the filing of a plagiarism suit) were celebrated by his classmates en masse, but somehow failed to crack the New York Times Bestseller list.

During Chad’s senior year in high school, he submitted a number of music review samples to six magazines and ended up writing for three of them. His reviews were published in True Tunes Tunes, a now-defunct Wheaton, IL-based publication that celebrated the crème de la crème of the Christian music underground (He is not making this up) and boasted a circulation of over 25,000 rabid readers. He also wrote one lone review for a now-defunct (Do you sense a theme here?) magazine called Shout!, which clumsily encompassed a variety of incompatible genres, including country, rap, alternative rock, and electronic music. Reading it was not unlike eating country-fried steak and sushi at the same time, with just a dab of mint chutney. This is probably why the publication failed as a commercial enterprise, come to think of it. For five years, Chad also wrote a regular music column for Essential Connection magazine, which had over 120,000 readers. Chad recently resumed writing music reviews after a ten year hiatus from them. Now he is a bi-monthly columnist for the Prime Parents’ Club. Read his work here.

Chad’s first full-length book, The Stained Glass Kaleidoscope: Essays at Play in the Churchyard of the Mind, is an essay-driven creative memoir in which he explores life through the heartfelt and humorous tri-fold lens of theology, pop culture, and Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder. He is currently writing a work of Young Adult supernatural fiction with Virginia-based collaborator Amanda Lynch.

Chad recently illustrated the cover of Washington, D. C.-based author Dwain Smith’s most recent book, Bullheaded. He is in the planning and development stages of creating art for a children’s book for Prime Parents’ Club’s brainchild Jacqueline Wilson. He can be hired for a small fortune to draw other pretty pictures as well.

As a singer-songwriter, Chad enjoys playing stadium-sized arenas in his imagination. He has amassed a sizable lot of recordings over the years – 31 of which can be downloaded for free at http://chadthomasjohnston.bandcamp.com/. He once spent months holed up in a basement with a 6’ ceiling, recording track after track for a Christmas album titled All is Calm, All is Bright. The resulting LP features syrupy layers of EBows, the codeine-infused, Mazzy Star-inspired “I’ll Be Droned for Christmas,” and a shoegazer version of “The First Noel,” among other inside-out versions of Christmas classics. Johnston sings and plays guitar, bass, and drums. Although he played trumpet for seven years, he sold his bratty brass instrument to a child years ago because he could no longer stand the sight or sound of it with all of its blatting and its “look-at-me” theatrics. It always insisted on carrying on like a brass Tony Bennett.

Chad bills his Web site, http://chadthomasjohnston.com/, as “The Playground for Your Mind,” and rightly so. It features multimedia content that includes “vlogs,” free MP3s, interviews, deliriously unhinged writings (including regular features such as “Preggersville,” “Nightmarriage,” and “Laughing in the Faith of Death”), and plenty of drawings that are born out of long meetings at work, during which Chad must doodle to survive.

Chad teaches a monthly film course at his church called Sanctuary of the Cinema. The course applies a Christian interpretive lens to a variety of critically acclaimed secular films – including David Lynch’s The Straight Story, Elia Kazan’s Face in the Crowd, and Jessica Yu’s In the Realms of the Unreal: The Mystery of Henry Darger, in an effort to develop a well-integrated view of Christian spirituality.

Chad received Bachelor of Science and Master of Arts degrees in Communication Studies from Missouri State University, where he also taught public speaking and a variety of intersession courses (including Intercultural Communication in China: The Films of Zhang Yimou, Asian Voices: Exploring Interpersonal Communication in Asian Films, and The Rhetoric of Evil: Exploring Nazi Germany Through Film) for several years. As an Adjunct Online Instructor for Drury University, he also taught Communication Ethics, Introduction to Intercultural Communication, and A Survey of Intercultural Communication through Film, which he proposed and developed for the university.

Visit Chad at his subterranean, subcutaneous, submarine Interweb lair: http://chadthomasjohnston.com/

Visit Chad’s bio at the Jenée Arthur Agency LLC: http://jeneearthuragency.com/arthurs-authors/chad-thomas-johnston/.

Contact Chad at [email protected].

Follow Chad on Twitter at @Saint_Upid.

Favorite Music: The Innocence Mission, Elliott Smith, Björk, Mark Kozelek/Red House Painters/Sun Kil Moon, Radiohead, U2, Belle & Sebastian, Arthur Lee/Love, Lou Reed/The Velvet Underground, Stereolab, Suzanne Vega, Aimee Mann, Michael Penn, Sufjan Stevens, Sam Phillips, Echo & the Bunnymen, The Magnetic Fields, Big Star, Bob Dylan, The Jesus & Mary Chain, XTC, Joanna Newsom, Iron & Wine, The Flaming Lips, The Smiths/Morrissey, T. Rex, The Beatles, Slowdive/Mojave 3, Mazzy Star, Marissa Nadler, Nirvana, The Pixies, Autolux, The National, Michael Knott/L. S. U., The Prayer Chain, Doves, John Denver, Denison Witmer, Luxury/Lee Bozeman, Nick Drake, Portishead, Pearl Jam, The Cure, The Clientele, The Zombies, PJ Harvey, Cat Stevens, Neko Case, M. Ward, Luna, Low, Leonard Cohen, Joni Mitchell, Jeff Buckley, Deerhoof, Deerhunter, David Bowie, Blonde Redhead, The Autumns, Vashti Bunyan, Grizzly Bear, Damien Jurado, Let’s Active, King’s X, The Smashing Pumpkins, Heatmiser, Stephanie Dosen, The Shins, Of Montreal, Judee Sill, Simon & Garfunkel/Paul Simon, The Elevator Division, Starflyer 59, & Larry Norman.

Favorite Films: There Will Be Blood, Exit Through the Gift Shop, Frozen River, Taxi Driver, Magnolia, Punch-Drunk Love, Palindromes, Bubble, Grizzly Man, Stroszek, Kill Bill, Rushmore, The Color of Paradise, Blood Simple, Pi, The Celebration, Sunset Boulevard, Red Sorghum, Ju Dou, Hero, Schindler’s List, Do the Right Thing, Dogville, Mallrats, Inception, Paper Moon, Mary & Max, Spirited Away, Princess Mononoke, Vertigo, Rear Window, Inland Empire, In the Realms of the Unreal, Scott Pilgrim vs. the World, The Fantastic Mr. Fox, Picnic at Hanging Rock, The Last Wave, Gran Torino, The Wicker Man (original), Dear Zachary, Onibaba, Coraline, The Nightmare Before Christmas, The Virgin Spring, Safe, Perfume: The Story of a Murderer, Good Bye Lenin!, Micmacs, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Roman Holiday, Breakfast at Tiffany’s, A Serious Man, The Devil’s Backbone.

Favorite Books: C.S. Lewis’ “The Great Divorce,” Jon Krakauer’s “Under the Banner of Heaven,” Orson Scott Card’s “Ender’s Game,” C.S. Lewis’ “Perelandra,” Flannery O’Connor (Everything!), Anne Lamott’s “Traveling Mercies,” Donald Miller’s “Blue Like Jazz,” Jeannette Walls’ “The Glass Castle,” D.T. Max’s “The Family That Couldn’t Sleep,” Mary Roach’s “Stiff,” Stephen King’s “On Writing,” Annie Dillard’s “The Writing Life.”

“Chad Thomas Johnston is an author, sonuva’ preacha’ man, PhD-dropout, singer/songwriter, music producer/sonic reducer, daydreaming doodler, gorilla/guerilla publicist, cinemaddict, & pop-culture obsessive. He is represented by Seattle, WA-based literary agent Jenée Arthur, who is currently shopping his debut manuscript to major publishing houses.

Follow Him on Twitter: @Saint_Upid

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