Best-selling author and philosopher Charles Johnson has been writing and teaching for more than three decades. His novel, “Middle Passage,” about a freed slave who unknowingly boards an American slave ship, won the National Book Award in 1990. Johnson’s work spans multiple genres, including dozens of screen and teleplays as well as several short-story collections like his 2011 work, “Doctor King’s Refrigerator.” In a new memoir, Johnson writes about his childhood growing up in Evanston, Illinois, his early career as an illustrator and his years teaching writing at the University of Washington.