Joyce Johnson (author)

Writer Joyce Johnson (1935-) Jack Kerouac's lover in the years 1957-1958, the time during which "On the Road" was published and Kerouac catapulted to instant fame. She was the first to bring attention to the experience of women of the Beat generation in her 1983 memoir, "Minor Characters," documenting her affair with Kerouac. "Minor Characters" won a National Book Critics Circle Award. Since then, many memoirs and anthologies have been published by and about women of the Beat generation.

Born Joyce Glassman to a Jewish family in Queens, New York Joyce was raised on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, ironically just around the corner from the apartment of William S. Burroughs and Joan Vollmer Adams Burroughs, where Allen Ginsberg and Jack Kerouac visited on many occasions. Glassman's mother had hopes that her daughter would become a famous musical composer. At the age of thirteen, Joyce started rebelling against her controlling parents and hanging out in Washington Square. She matriculated at Barnard College at the age of 16, but failed her graduation by one class. It was at Barnard that she became friends with Elise Cowen, brief lover of Allen Ginsberg, who introduced her to the Beat circle. Ginsberg was the one who set Glassman and Jack Kerouac up on a blind date.

A book of Johnson and Kerouac's letters entitled "Door Wide Open: A Beat Love Affair in Letters, 1957-1958" was published in 2000. Another memoir, "Missing Men" came out in 2004. Joyce is also the author of the novels "Come and Join the Dance" (1961), "Bad Connections" (1978), and "In the Night Café" (1989). Her fiction and articles have appeared in The New Yorker, Vanity Fair, Harper's, New York Times Magazine, Washington Post, Harper's Bazaar, and New York.

In 1992 she received an NEA grant, and since 1983 has taught writing, primarily at Columbia University's MFA program, but also at the Breadloaf Writers Conference, The University of Vermont, and New York University. "The Children's Wing," the penultimate chapter of her novel "In The Night Cafe," was a first-prize O. Henry Award recipient.

Joyce was married briefly to Jim Johnson, an abstract expressionist painter, who was tragically killed in a motorcycle accident. Her second marriage ended in divorce. It was from this marriage that she had her son, Daniel Pinchbeck, also an author and co-founder of OPEN CITY literary magazine.