Joyce Johnson is the author of the memoir Minor Characters, winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award; Missing Men; Door Wide Open: A Beat Love Affair in Letters, 1957–1958 (with Jack Kerouac); and The Voice is All: The Lonely Victory of Jack Kerouac, a groundbreaking portrait of Kerouac as a young artist. She has written for Vanity Fair and The New Yorker and lives in New York City.