Rheta Grimsley Johnson (1953- ) is an award-winning reporter, columnist, and travelogue and memoir writer whose subject matter includes seemingly average southern people whose stories she elevates to the universal. Johnson writes compassionately about the often overlooked and rapidly disappearing contemporary rural South.
Johnson was born Rheta Grimsley on November 10, 1953, in Colquitt, Georgia; she grew up in Montgomery, Montgomery County. She recognized by the eighth grade that she wanted to become a journalist and began working on her school newspaper. She attended Auburn University, where she won the National Pacemaker Award, an award for excellence in student journalism, in 1974, while editor of the university's student newspaper, The Auburn Plainsman.

Her authorized biography of Charles Schulz, creator of the "Peanuts" comic strip was published in 1989 under the title Good Grief: The Story of Charles M. Schulz. In it, Johnson examines the cartoonist's work and life, linking him in various ways to his main character Charlie Brown. Johnson and her husband divorced that year as well.
Johnson was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for commentary in 1991. Two years later, she married reporter and journalism professor Don Grierson. In 1994, the Atlanta Journal Constitution hired her as a general columnist after the death of its popular columnist Lewis Grizzard. She worked in Atlanta for seven years while living in Carrollton, Georgia.
In 1996, while on assignment writing about a bachelor party that featured a boar hunt, she and her husband visited the town of Henderson, Louisiana. There, they bought a small houseboat named the Green Queen and began spending much of their spare time on it. They then bought a vacation home in Henderson on the edge or the Atchafalaya Swamp. Johnson's autobiographical Poor Man's Provence: Finding Myself in Cajun Louisiana (2008), documents and defines the unique food, songs, dances, and world view of the Cajun culture that she immersed herself in in Henderson.
Johnson's second husband died in 2009. Now living in a rural area named Fishtrap Hollow near Pickwick Lake and Iuka in North Mississippi, Johnson continues to write one column a week. As of 2009, her column has appeared in approximately 50 newspapers nationwide and was syndicated by media giant Hearst Entertainment & Syndication Group.
Works by Rheta Grimsley Johnson
America's Faces (1987)
Works by Rheta Grimsley Johnson
America's Faces (1987)
Good Grief: The Story of Charles M. Schulz (1989)
Poor Man's Provence: Finding Myself in Cajun Louisiana (2008)
Enchanted Evening Barbie and the Second Coming: A Memoir (2010)
Additional Resources
"Rheta Grimsley Johnson" Biographical Dictionary of American Newspaper Columnists. Biography Reference Bank. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1995.
Additional Resources
"Rheta Grimsley Johnson" Biographical Dictionary of American Newspaper Columnists. Biography Reference Bank. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1995.