Draft:T.D. Johnston

T.D. Johnston (born July 18, 1961) is an American author best known for his crime novel, Reciprocity (2022), as well as his award-winning short fiction.

Early life
Timothy Dwight Johnston was born July 18, 1961, in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, to Robert and Ruth Johnston. Johnston's family moved to Durham, North Carolina, where his father served as headmaster at Durham Academy.

Johnston's love for fiction was fostered in his middle school years. He was brought up a student-athlete, excelling in football, baseball , basketball , and swimming. In high school, Johnston was the only sophomore on Durham Academy's state championship basketball team, and he started at quarterback in football and in centerfield in baseball. After his sophomore year in Durham, his family moved to Milwaukee, Wisconsin, where Johnston attended the University School of Milwaukee, lettering and starting in football, basketball and baseball.

Johnston enrolled at Davidson College in 1979 and graduated with a B.A. in English in 1983. While at Davidson, he played varsity baseball as a freshman before focusing on student government. He served as student body president in 1982-83. He was also elected to Who's Who Among Students in American Universities & Colleges in recognition of outstanding merit and accomplishment as a student.

He received his Master of Arts degree in Creative Writing from Antioch University in 2003.

Career
After graduating from Davidson in 1983, Johnston worked for Procter & Gamble in Memphis, Tennessee. He left after a year to move back to North Carolina and worked at First Union. In 1986, Johnston left his job to pursue creating board games on the basis of sports. Based in Charlotte, North Carolina, he created a total of five games between the years of 1986-1992: Alley-Oop! , Touchdown, Grand Slam, Hornet Mania, and Tiger Trivia. Alley-Oop! became successful in the region of Charlotte and the Carolinas. In addition to board games, he created the Garden Express and Dairy Express. Johnston spent a number of years in the entrepreneurial world before becoming an English teacher, basketball coach, athletic director, and ultimately preparatory school headmaster.

Johnston spent nearly twenty years teaching English, World Literature, and Creative Writing at several of America's top college-preparatory schools, including Ransom Everglades, Pace Academy, and Sewickley Academy, and was a head varsity boys basketball coach whose teams averaged over twenty victories per season and all advanced to the state playoffs.

Johnston headed two college-preparatory schools, Beaufort Academy and Triangle Day School, before leaving the school world to focus full-time on writing fiction and editing the acclaimed Short Story America anthology series of short fiction by today's authors.

Short Story America
In 2010, Johnston, with a great love for short fiction since childhood, and already a published author of short stories himself, developed a website promoting the art of the short story. Short Story America continues today and has published seven volumes of selected short stories in their anthology series. A year later it was named by Writer’s Digest as one of the Top 50 Online Literary Magazines in the world.

The Works of T.D. Johnston
Johnston's short stories have been featured in literary magazines such as Hobart Pulp ("The Closing"), PineStraw Magazine ("The Errand" and "The Guest" ), Y'all Magazine ("Weeding for Eisenhower" , "The Glad Promise" , and "Shoebox Love" ), O. Henry Magazine, Mulberry Fork Review, Literary Juice, and Civil War Camp Chest, and literary anthologies such as Rod Serling's Books' 'Submitted for Your Approval' ("The Interruption of Thomas Darrow"), and Short Story America's seven anthologies of contemporary short fiction ("Sixth Period", "Gratuity", "The Interruption of Thomas Darrow", "A Game of Chess", et al) where he served as publisher and editor.

Reciprocity
Johnston's debut novel, Reciprocity, was a finalist for the International Book Award for Best General Fiction in 2022. Reciprocity was optioned by Universal Television Studios, and is in development by Universal as a multi-season television series.

Influence
Johnston's short stories are described as literary, and his novels are thrillers. This follows his reading passions from throughout his life. As a reader, he has always admired the literary masters of the short story, from the American greats (F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway, Flannery O'Connor, Edgar Allan Poe, Jack London, Raymond Carver, John Cheever et al) to the Russian masters like Anton Chekhov, Nikolai Gogol, and Leo Tolstoy. As a fan of novels since middle school, he's gravitated to the thrillers of Alistair MacLean, Robert Ludlum, Ken Follett, Stephen King, Peter Straub, John Grisham, and Frederick Forsyth, and to authors of cautionary dystopian tales like George Orwell, Upton Sinclair, Margaret Atwood, and Sinclair Lewis. His reading preferences have naturally influenced his writing.

Johnston has also been deeply influenced by Rod Serling and The Twilight Zone, as those stories are fiction as commentary, an important characteristic of much of Johnston's fiction.

Personal life
Johnston is married to Dr. Stacey Hammond Johnston, with whom he has three children: twins Brooke and Taylor (b. 2003), and Nick (b. 2013). They met in 2002 as educators at Pace Academy in Atlanta, Georgia. They were married in 2003. Johnston and his family currently reside in Orange Park, Florida and Beaufort, South Carolina.

A huge baseball fan, Johnston has been in the same fantasy baseball league for 36 years.

Novels

 * Reciprocity (2022)

Short Story Collections

 * Friday Afternoon and Other Stories (2016)
 * Weeding for Eisenhower: Stories (2021)

Other

 * Series Editor for Short Story America, Volumes One through Seven

Upcoming Novels

 * The Daffodil Society (2025)
 * The Furtherer (2026)
 * The Temples of the Graces (2026)
 * The Purple Testament (Reciprocity, Book Two) (2025)

Awards

 * Winner of the 2017 International Book Award for Best Short Fiction (Friday Afternoon and Other Stories)
 * Finalist for the 2022 International Book Award for Best General Fiction (Reciprocity)
 * Finalist for Historical Novel Society's Solander Prize for Short Fiction (for the short story, The Interruption of Thomas Darrow)