There was a moment while reading the E- Channel, an exchange between award-winning authors E. Ethelbert Miller and Charles Johnson, when I forgot I was on the Internet. Their words had an intimacy and a spirituality I hadn’t experienced before online. “I wanted to change the literary landscape using technology,” Miller, author of 11 books of poetry and non-fiction and director of Howard University’s African-American Resource Center, explained during breakfast at Busboys and Poets on 14 St. NW.
“As I look back it is something unique in literary culture,” Johnson, a 1998 MacArthur fellow who has published extensively — four novels, three short story collections, screenplays and numerous essays — told me during a telephone interview from his home in Washington state.