Bret Anthony Johnston

A national journal of literature & discussion

Fiction Issue Cover. Photo by Adam Ekberg.

Bret Anthony Johnston’s most recent novel is We Burn Daylight (Penguin Random House, 2024). His work appears in the Virginia Quarterly Review, the New Yorker, and The Best American Short Stories. He is the Director of the Michener Center for Writers in Austin, Texas.

http://bretanthonyjohnston.com/

See Work

FICTION / Fiction 2024

Time of the Preacher

By Bret Anthony Johnston , Illustration by João Fazenda

Holland spent Wednesday building a privacy fence for a tiresome academic couple in Barton Hills. Pressure-treated posts, horizontal cedar boards, stained and sealed, it was his third that week.

#VQRTRUESTORY / Summer 2017

Dropping In

By Bret Anthony Johnston , Photography by Bill Driver

From the early ’60s to the late ’70s, the Desert Gardens Ranch nudist colony was secreted away in the foothills of the San Jacinto Mountains. This is Desert Hot Springs, California, two-ish hours east of Los Angeles. The story goes that the...

FICTION / Summer 2016

Dixon

By Bret Anthony Johnston , Illustration by Corey Brickley

A star-smeared night, the usual briny and humid haze of the brush country in August, and Dixon was hauling twenty cases of stolen toys up from the Rio Grande valley. If the border patrol at the Sarita checkpoint asked, he’d claim a delivery...

FICTION / Fall 2013

To a Good Home

By Bret Anthony Johnston