Ian Denis Johnson

Ian Johnson is a writer and journalist, working primarily in China and Germany. His Chinese name is Zhang Yan (张彦).
A reporter for The Wall Street Journal, Johnson won the 2001 Pulitzer Prize for his coverage of the persecution of Falun Gong practitioners in China. His reporting from China was also honored in 2001 by the Overseas Press Club and the Society of Professional Journalists.

Life and work

Born in Montreal, Quebec, Canada, Johnson is a naturalized United States citizen who lives in Berlin, Germany. He recently wrote a Wall Street Journal review of "Advocate for the Doomed," about James G. McDonald's efforts to warn the world about the Nazis in the early 1930s.

In 2010, Johnson published a book about the Islamic Center of Munich. He conducted research on the book while on a Nieman fellowship at Harvard University. He attended the University of Florida.[1]

In 2004, Johnson published Wild Grass: Three Stories of Change in Modern China (Pantheon), which was later released in paperback and has been translated into several languages.

On February 9, 2006, Johnson delivered congressional testimony on the Muslim Brotherhood in Europe. He described the Brotherhood as "an umbrella group that regularly lobbies major international institutions like the EU and the Vatican" and "controls some of the most dynamic, politically active Muslim groups in key European countries, such as Britain, France and Germany." He said the group has schools "to train imams," has funded a "mechanism in the guise of a UK-registered charity," and has a fatwa council to enforce ideological conformity.

In 2009 Johnson was moving back to China. He left the Wall Street Journal in 2010 to pursue magazine and book writing on cultural and social affairs.