Maria Johnson has been a local, North Carolina journalist since 1983. She worked for the News & Record for 23 years. In 2007, she became a freelancer and has written regularly for the O'Henry Magazine since it began in August of 2011. Maria writes well and her chatty, informal style puts interviewees at ease. She writes copious notes and has a special talent for taking often seemingly random bits of information and combining them into a coherent article. It is easy to see why Maria has won several awards for journalism, national as well as local.
Some stories that have been especially memorable to her include the one she wrote about streetscape artist Maggie Fickett for the November 2017 O'Henry Magazine. She also covered the resettlement of the Montagnard families from Vietnam to Greensboro in the mid-1980's. She has written about poverty in North Carolina, AIDS in Greensboro; and covered many authors and celebrities who have passed through Greensboro or who call Greensboro home. While Maria likes to tackle the difficult topics, she also enjoys the more lighthearted stories, like writing about the time she had to fish a kernel of popcorn out of her elementary school son's ear. She also met "the other" Maria Johnson, a Spanish immersion teacher in Greensboro and wrote about how much they had in common and laughed about the many ways people have confused them.
When Maria is not investigating a new story, you can find her out walking her hound dog, cycling and hiking the local trails with her husband, spending time with her two sons, playing tennis, and just getting out and meeting people. In the above photo, Maria is on site at Toni Shaw's photography studio writing a story for O'Henry Magazine (Feb. 2018) about Greensboro Daily Photo. It was a perfect O'Henry twist for Maria to be interviewing me, while I was interviewing Toni Shaw for GDP. Toni and I were busy photographing each other as Maria was photographing and interviewing us. I couldn't let Maria get away that day without gathering material for a GDP post about her. It was a fun day for all.
Maria appears to be one of those people with a multitude of interests and the ability to channel those interests into stories that grab the attention of the rest of us! Obviously, she is a wonderful asset for your community.
Posted by: Lowell | Friday, February 02, 2018 at 09:22 AM
A wonderful portrait of her!
Posted by: William Kendall | Friday, February 02, 2018 at 11:29 AM