The reviews keep mounting about Corpus Christi native and author Bret Anthony Johnston’s first book, Corpus Christi: Stories, ranging from the Los Angeles Times and San Francisco Chronicle to the Texas Book Review. Even one of his former Del Mar College English professors, who Johnston acknowledges in the front of his book, reviewed the aspiring author’s work in the Caller-Times.

“With a compassion that belies his years, Bret Anthony Johnston turns a questing eye on life’s difficulties in his extraordinary debut collection, Corpus Christi: Stories,” wrote Mike Anzaldua, a faculty member with the College’s Department of English and Philosophy. “These thoughtful pieces, while deeply rooted in a familiar local setting, contain the very gist of universal human experience–people straining to connect, people needing to understand.”

Johnston launched the debut of Corpus Christi: Stories here in his hometown in July. On Monday, Nov. 1, the former Del Mar College student is coming back to campus to read from his book and sign copies.

Sponsored by the Department of Social Sciences, the free reading begins at 11 a.m. in Room 433 of White Library on the East Campus, Naples off Staples and Kosar. The Del Mar College Bookstore will also have books available for purchase at the event for $20 (includes tax). For more information about the reading, call 698-1228.

Johnston attended Del Mar College—receiving the school’s Outstanding Student in English Award—and then transferred to Texas A&M University-Corpus Christi, from which he graduated with Highest Honors. After graduating from TAMU-CC, he earned two master’s degrees, the first at Miami University in Ohio and the second at the world-renowned University of Iowa Writers’ Workshop, where he was ranked Number One in his class. He has taught creative writing at universities in Ohio, Iowa and Michigan, and currently, he teaches at California State University in San Bernardino when he’s not writing or skateboarding.

Johnston’s fiction appears in magazines such as The Paris Review, Open City, and Shenandoah, which awarded him its Goodheart Prize for best story of the year. His work has also been featured in many anthologies, including New Stories from the South: The Year’s Best, 2003 and 2004; Prize Stories: The O. Henry Prize Stories 2002; and Scribner’s Best of the Fiction Workshops 1999. Johnston is also a recipient of the James Michener Award from the Michener-Copernicus Society of America and three short fiction honors from Atlantic Monthly. Additionally, Johnston has received two short fiction honors from the Texas Institute of Letters.