Before he was a much lauded author and one of the youngest directors of creative writing in Harvard University’s storied history, Bret Anthony Johnston was a promising up-and-comer in the world of professional skateboarding. During a skating demonstration in his early 20s, however, he suffered a round of injuries that shattered his professional skateboarding dreams. This disappointment spurred him to seek solace in the written word: A lifelong avid reader who was inspired by the lyrics of Jim Morrison, Johnston had begun writing as a teenager.

Johnston enrolled at Texas A&M University-Corpus Christi and earned a degree in English, then honed his craft by attending the esteemed Iowa Writers’ Workshop for a master’s degree. (He also earned another master’s degree from Miami University.) As his stories began to be published in prestigious literary journals around the world, Johnston was praised for his tireless work ethic, the empathy he displayed for his frequently fallible characters, and his electric, naturalistic prose.

With rave reviews for 2004’s Corpus Christi: Stories and the howto-write manifesto Naming the World: and Other Exercises for the Creative Writer — not to mention the demands of Ivy League office hours — no one would be surprised if Johnston put away his board for good. But he hasn’t turned his back on his fi rst love: He still devotes afew days every week to riding the ramps. Writing and skating are, after all, not so different. “They both require long hours, a good deal of pain, and an originality of vision,” he explains. “Skaters, like writers, see the world differently from everyone else. A skater is conditioned to constantly look out for smooth pavement and waved curbs, and writers are conditioned to look for the way light plays on a wall, how a woman exhales after she snaps shut her cell phone. Within those gestures and within those skateable spaces are universes to explore.”

The boyish Johnston, whose Vans tennis shoes reveal a glimpse of his skating persona to Harvard colleagues and whose briefcase and fresh wrinkles impart his professorial status to kids at the local skate park, says he’ll never stop skating. “I have no doubt that whatever success I’ve achieved as a writer is directly predicated by my life as a skater. Skating for me is directly linked to my writing, and to how often I write. Once you’ve done the splits on a metal handrail, taking a story through another draft is a blessing, not a burden.”

Johnston’s writing shows no sign of slowing down. His first novel, The Unaccompanied, will be out around late 2009. “The more I skate, the more I write and vice versa. They fuel each other, and if I go too long without one or the other, they both suffer. I’ve got to do both.”

Photography by Leah Fasten