Toni Ann Johnson won the Flannery O’Connor Award for her linked story collection, Light Skin Gone to Waste, which was selected for the prize and edited by Roxane Gay. Homegoing, Johnson’s first work about the Arrington family, was released in 2021 after winning Accents Publishing’s inaugural novella contest, judged by Katerina Stoykova. Johnson’s new linked collection, a continuation of the Arringtons’ story, But Where’s Home?, was selected by Crystal Wilkinson as the winner of the 2024 Screen Door Press Prize for fiction and is forthcoming in February 2026.
Toni Ann Johnson is foremost a storyteller, one adept at crossing genres. She wrote the screenplays for Ruby Bridges and Crown Heights, and her collection of linked stories, Light Skin Gone to Waste, won the 2021 Flannery O’Connor Award. Between those accomplishments, she published a novel and a novella, but Johnson’s career as a storyteller began much earlier with a contributing writer role in an Off Broadway show and progressed to writing the play Gramercy Park Is Closed to the Public, produced by the New York Stage and Film Company in 1999. As an undergrad, she attended Tisch School of the Arts at NYU, and years later, earned her MFA from Antioch University in Los Angeles. Much could written about Johnson and her writing journey, but Kirkus Review deftly captured the cornerstones of her work in 2014 when it said of her novel Remedy for a Broken Angel, “Johnson writes with sensitivity and a good ear for dialogue. She is both musically and psychologically acute . . .” True on all counts, the same could easily be said about her latest book But Where’s Home?, a second collection of linked stories to be released in 2026.
RR: I’m excited to chat about But Where’s Home?, your latest book published by Screen Door Press. The collection’s stories are “linked,” meaning characters recur throughout the book, which at times evokes the feeling of a novel. With linked collections, I’m always curious about the stories writers include. The spaces between those stories might be seen as holding other untold stories. In your newest collection, you choose to explore those spaces and revisit characters from your previous book, Light Skin Gone to Waste. It’s reminiscent of Elizabeth Strout, who often revisits characters from her other books. Like her, you seem to be writing about family and, to some extent, community. Were those ideas present as you wrote this second collection? What was your approach?
TAJ: Yes, I was thinking about which stories to focus on and whose POV they should be in, but much of that work had been done earlier. Originally, most of these stories were part of an early version of Light Skin Gone to Waste. The original book was close to five hundred pages. I had to separate the books, one, because the long version didn’t sell, and two, because the word count limit when I went to submit to the Flannery O’Connor Award was seventy-five thousand words, and my book was twice that.
The leftover stories, except for the novella Homegoing, which was published separately by Accents Publishing in May of 2021, became the new collection, But Where’s Home?
I should clarify that the Arringtons are based on my family. Many of the stories are inspired by real events. So, when choosing whose POV to focus on, sometimes the choice was as simple as who did what, or what happened to whom, and how I remembered it. When I began to put the new book together, I tried to organize the stories that hadn’t made it into LSGTW in a way that had a throughline. Livia had a trajectory that was mostly about her relationship with her father Phil, but Maddie (the main protagonist in LSGTW) was featured in only one story, the novella. So I added a story from Maddie’s point of view about her relationship with her mother [Velma] to round out her character for the new collection.
In the first draft of this book, that story was the only addition to the new collection. Once I met with my editor, Crystal Wilkinson, she asked for additional stories to create “more connective tissue.” One thing she specifically wanted was an opening piece to introduce readers to the Arrington world. The ending piece was Grandma Emily’s story, where she narrates the emotional fate of the family after her death. As a bookend, I decided to make the opening a Maddie story narrated from before her birth.
Crystal also asked me to separate the story [written] about Maddie and Velma. That became “Far Away from Here” (young Maddie) and “Far Away from There” (older Maddie). And finally, she asked me to consider any stories I’d written about the Arringtons that I hadn’t previously published. I found a version of an abandoned story from Phil’s POV, called “To the Moon,” which is about an event where he brings his mistress to the family home and has Maddie babysit the mistress’s little girl. [The story occurs] after the fact, and he’s recounting the event while sitting at a bar. The new version of the story adds Phil’s longing for his father and his love of jazz, and it refers back to the first story in LSGTW, “Up That Hill,” with the racism Phil and Velma encounter upon moving to a white town.
RR: Because you’ve previously written a linked collection, a novel and an earlier novella, I wondered how writing this book felt different, or the same, as writing your other books?
TAJ: Light Skin Gone to Waste and Homegoing felt similar because they were once all part of the same collection about the same family. But Where’s Home? is also part of the same series, but it feels somewhat different, I think, because it goes deeper with both daughters setting boundaries with their parents, and we see the adults they’ve become in response. And But Where’s Home? also repeatedly considers metaphysical elements like reincarnation, time travel, spirits watching the living, and sometimes visiting.
RR: Before we go any further, how would describe what this book is about?
TAJ: As I see it, the book is about a Black family’s experience living in a predominantly white town, which they perceive as an achievement—and how navigating unprocessed generational trauma in that environment, which sometimes subtly and other times overtly undermines their humanity, destroys the parents’ moral perspective. They can’t provide a safe or nurturing home for their daughters, who ultimately have to reparent and rebuild themselves elsewhere.
RR: Those ideas definitely came across in reading. I felt so much for the two girls and their dilemmas. This seems like a good place to ask about the novella in the collection? It’s in Maddie’s point of view and feels central to her story. The novella begins when she leaves home for college and includes scenes with her father, who is an affluent psychoanalyst in New York but largely fails at his own personal relationships. Did you always know this book would include a novella?
TAJ: I did. Both novellas were in the original long version of the book. When the books were first separated, it was always my intention to include it in a subsequent collection. The novella But Where’s Home? is based on a screenplay I wrote when I was in college at NYU, where much of the story takes place. I still have a hard copy and used it for its structure and some of the scenes. It was autobiographical and written decades ago while the events were fresh. My parents, like Maddie’s, officially split up during my first week of college, and like Maddie, I found out by nearly walking in on my father and the woman he was sleeping with (a family friend). When the piece was originally read in my class with Professor Arnaud d’Usseau, he and my classmates explained what I didn’t understand at the time, which was that my father was using me for emotional support during the marriage, but once the marriage was over, he didn’t need me anymore, and he pushed me aside because he now had a partner. When I finally began writing the novella years later, that insight helped me better understand the dynamics between Maddie and Phil, and between Maddie and her mother, Velma, and her sister, Livia. Because the final implosion of Velma and Phil’s marriage happens in the novella, it always felt like an essential piece of the story.
RR: It seems important to say that a reader needs no knowledge of your previous collection to dive into this one. I’m glad you mentioned Maddie, Livia, and Velma together. In your previous collection, I felt I was getting to know the family and situation as a whole. In this one, I felt a stronger mother/daughter throughline, which could be a subjective reading. Were you thinking about Velma, Maddie, and Livia and their relationships to each other as you put this book together?
TAJ: I think you’re right. The throughline in the first book became Maddie’s feelings about the white friend who wounded her, Tobias, which were linked to her feelings about the town of Monroe, and the damage she felt both caused her. That relationship is also explored in Homegoing. Maddie sees Tobias again when they’re in their forties, and they revisit what happened between them as children.
In this book, the main throughline is Maddie’s attempt to heal her mother, her fight to survive that relationship, and the inner transformation that takes place for her as a result. The subplot focuses on Maddie and Livia’s relationship with their father’s dysfunction.
I did think about the progression of both Maddie and Livia and how each of them had to stand up to their parents. As a child, Livia had no agency. She couldn’t force Phil and Velma to treat her like an equal member of the family. As a young adult, she’s tougher, but she still struggles to assert herself with Phil. When she’s about to become a parent herself, she then steps into her power.
Maddie’s progression is different. She sees through Phil’s nonsense and stands up to him as a young adult. She stands up to Velma, too, but she’s vulnerable to Velma’s emotional abuse well into her fifties. She has to learn how to let go of what she can’t change.
RR: The mother/daughter situation is such rich fictional ground in your collection. While preparing for this interview, I was reading The Edge of Water by Olufunke Grace Bankole and came across this line written by a Nigerian mother to her daughter: “For better or for worse, a woman’s mate determines the course of her children’s lives.” The line felt connected to themes in your collection, and I began wondering about the books or writers you see your work in conversation with.
TAJ: When I read Kathleen Collins’s Whatever Happened to Interracial Love, I felt a kinship with it. There are some content and style similarities in our work. She writes about middle-class, educated, artistic Black people living sophisticated, complicated lives in the New York area. Her characters could have interacted with mine.
I recently read a novel in stories that I loved, Coleman Hill by Kim Coleman Foote, whose approach using first, second, and third person, and even first-person plural, is similar to mine. And Coleman Hill is a Black family saga, set in New Jersey, that examines abuse and generational trauma (due to racism), while also incorporating humor. There are multiple intense mother/daughter relationships in the book. Though the details are nothing like those between Maddie and Velma and Velma and Livia, emotionally, they sit in a similar place.
Mama Said by Kristen Gentry is another linked collection I adore, about a Black family, this one is in Kentucky, with three difficult mother/daughter relationships. My characters share some similarities with the struggles the daughters in Gentry’s collection experience. And I think our writing styles are comparable.
RR: What do you hope readers take away from But Where’s Home?
TAJ: I hope the book is affirming for people who’ve been wounded by their pasts, whether by family or community, and that they feel encouraged to heal and to set boundaries, or even to separate from an abusive family member or any abusive situation. If it’s a community that wounded them, I hope they’re moved to process those unresolved feelings. After the first book, Homegoing, came out, I heard from multiple Jewish friends who were bullied in Monroe as kids. The book helped them process some of it.
I also hope the book leads people to consider the lie of white supremacy and the fallacy of white communities’ superiority to communities of color. The Arringtons suffer from colonized thinking. They assimilate, believing proximity to whiteness elevates them. It does not. And the belief that it does is a rejection of their humanity. It leaves no space for them to be affirmed as Black people, which is to their psychological detriment, and it ultimately contributes to the destruction of their family.
RR: Sadly, this topic is timely but also critically important. Did challenges crop up while writing this collection? And would you give us a few insights about your writing process?
TAJ: The fact that both collections are inspired by my family has been challenging because some people are uncomfortable with the content. It’s also challenging because the issues are painful. Some are so absurd that they’re funny and entertaining, but they’re undoubtedly dysfunctional. It’s hard to write about even the funniest moments without feeling some of the pain.
My writing process is typically slow. Though this collection is coming out less than three years after the first one, I began working on this material in 2007 and wrote new stories, slowly, over the years. The largest revision on this new book took only a couple of weeks because that’s all I had once I received editorial notes. That was an immense challenge, because I prefer to work for a few hours each day and then give my brain time to synthesize what’s happening on the page. But the revision required many hours, every day, consecutively. It was hard for me, but I had no choice. If I’d missed my deadline, the book wouldn’t have been published on schedule.
RR: You definitely know about deadlines! You’ve written plays, short and long fiction, and screenplays. When you have an idea about a story you want to tell, do you always know which of those forms will work best, or how do you decide?
TAJ: I don’t always know. But I do know that I’m more interested in writing linked short fiction than I am in any other form right now. I’m working on a novel, and I miss the short form. I like the heterogeneity of voice, tone, and style that it allows. That said, sometimes stories and novellas seem to lend themselves to screenplay adaptation, so I’ve dabbled with that in the last year. But it’s much easier to get a story published than it is to get a movie made, so my time seems better served focusing on stories for now.
RR: I wanted to ask about the title of But Where’s Home? As a queer person, the title resonated with me, as did the theme of having to reclaim one’s idea of home. How did you arrive at the title?
TAJ: I’m glad it did. But Where’s Home? was the title of the original screenplay I wrote as an NYU student. It came from the scene where Maddie’s stuck on a trip with her father and his girlfriend, and she wants to go home, but she realizes there is no home to go to. As this second collection came together, I thought the novella’s title was apt, thematically, for the book, because the characters are all either longing for home, making a home, defining it, or destroying it, at different points throughout the stories.
RR: Can we close the interview with vocalist Alberta Hunter? She’s mentioned in the novella. At one point I lived in New York City, which is where I discovered her. Her phrasing is authentic, sassy and alive—clearly I’m a fan. Did you see her perform?
TAJ: I did, and it was phenomenal! She performed at The Cookery, on University Place, and I lived in the neighborhood during and after college. I saw her multiple times and admired her immensely. She was a delight. In my experience, she was friendly and seemed genuinely happy that her work was warmly embraced. She had a great voice, but more than that, her emotional range was impressive. She could be hilarious, and she could move a crowd to tears. And as you said, her phrasing was authentic and alive. There was a sparkle to her. Her eyes shined. Her musicians, Gerald Cook and Jimmy Lewis, were also lovely. I completely bought her performance of “Handy Man” (which I mention in the book), and had no idea she didn’t sleep with men [laughs]. It wasn’t until much later that I learned she was in a long-term relationship with a woman. I wish she could have lived to see gay marriage become legal. And I wish she hadn’t had to hide who she loved.
RR: I believed her rendition of “Handy Man,” too. The song’s innuendoes are hilarious, and her performance is flawless. I didn’t know about her personal life, but knowing this, I love her even more.
Thank you so much for chatting with me, Toni Ann. It’s been an absolute pleasure.
TAJ: Thank you. The pleasure was mine, Ramona.