Johnson is also the author of three cover essays in Harper's Magazine, most recently (April, 2015) Going It Alone: The Dignity and Challenge of Solitude, available for reading through his webpage.

Links to his media appearances, on Terry Gross's Fresh Air and on Kentucky Educational Television, may be found on his webpage.

His most recent nonfiction book Keeping Faith: A Skeptic's Journey draws on time spent living as a member of the monastic communities of the Trappist Abbey of Gethsemani in Kentucky and the San Francisco Zen Center as a means to examining what it means to a skeptic to have and keep faith.

He is currently at work on At the Center of All Beauty: The Dignity and Challenge of Solitude, a book-length meditation based on his 2016 cover essay in Harper's Magazine.

He received a 2007 fellowship from the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation to support completion of his third novel and to begin research and writing on a nonfiction project.