Women Reading Women: Louise Claire Johnson

Welcome to Women Reading Women — a series featuring women writers, and the women writers they love.

Louise Claire Johnson is a writer and the bestselling author of Behind the Red Door, voted a ‘Top 10 Must-Read’ by HELLO! Canada and featured by Notable as a “Writer to Watch.” Her work has appeared in The Globe & Mail, The Huffington Post, Flare Magazine, and more.

She is a graduate of Western University’s Richard Ivey School of Business and completed her master’s degree at Harvard University. Prior to becoming a writer, Louise lived and worked in Hong Kong, Switzerland, New York, and Boston—where she cultivated successful 360-degree marketing campaigns at Elizabeth Arden.

She’s a curious creature with an old soul who sends snail mail, collects typewriters, drinks too much coffee, and hopes to visit every quirky bookshop on her bucket list. Writing has always been her constant in an inconstant world, and eventually, it became a calling that couldn’t be ignored.

What is a book you would recommend to any woman writer?

Still Writing: The Perils and Pleasures of a Creative Life by Dani Shapiro. An underrated little book that is part-writing craft, part memoir—inspiring and insightful for writers at any stage of their careers and a comforting companion for those days when the self-doubt creeps in.

What’s your top book written by a woman?

Tough to choose, but Just Kids by Patti Smith is a personal favorite. From the way she describes the epochal days of life in New York City during the sixties and seventies to the raw vulnerability of her prose, it has a lyrical quality that has always stayed with me.

What’s the best piece of advice you’ve ever received?

“There are multiple routes to success” is a piece of advice I return to often—I believe we can achieve anything we set our minds to in life, but sometimes that requires pivoting or taking an alternate path that you previously never knew existed. It’s a reminder to not give up if the first attempt is a so-called “failure.” It’s having the courage, grit, patience, and tenacity to get back up and find another route to get to where you want to go.

What should every aspiring writer do/know/try/fear/run toward?

Do: put your butt in the chair and just write (it’s as simple and challenging as that).

Know: that little by little is how to achieve big things. In order to create something from nothing, you have to break down the process of writing a book into smaller tasks (focus on one chapter, one paragraph, or one sentence at a time).

Try: to tune out the white noise of the world (from technology to people) to deeply focus on the word world you’re creating.

Fear: never trying to write a book in the first place. Starting is often the hardest part.

Run Toward: people, places, and things that fill up your cup instead of depleting your energy—and any establishment that serves coffee or sells books.

Why do you think books by women are important?

In 2022, it’s easy to forget that for so many centuries, women weren’t allowed to write books or document their lives as part of the human condition. Women’s voices are still silenced in many parts of the world today, but by sharing our stories we draw collective strength, understanding, and recognition that our lived experiences not only exist, but they matter.

Quick-fire Questions

City you were born in versus city your heart belongs to?

I was born just outside of Toronto, but my heart belongs to New York City, Geneva, Switzerland, and Cambridge, Massachusetts—three cities that are so special to me, as it was while living in each of those places that I uncovered a new piece of myself.

A piece of art that inspires you?

Art is the expression of any creative skill that evokes emotional power, so for me, I feel as though my ‘art antenna’ is always up, drawing inspiration from all walks of life including: snippets of conversation, old Hollywood golden era films, vintage book covers, handwritten letters, bold patterned blouses, portraits and interviews with eccentric old people (so much wisdom), coffee table books (particularly those featuring bookshops, minimalist Scandinavian design, and calming, muted landscapes).

Fill in the blank: ___ helps stimulate my creativity.

Coffee.

Describe your writing in three words.

Heartfelt. Perceptive. Nostalgic.

What’s an assumption about you that you don’t think is true?

I think people might assume I’m extroverted from my social media, but I am deeply introverted and could spend all day reading and writing with a bottomless pot of coffee. My preferred state is in solitude.

Name a book that you wish you wrote.

Little Women by Louisa May Alcott (and the entire Harry Potter series by J.K. Rowling ☺)

In your opinion, who is the most underrated author?

Debut authors, in general, are often the most underrated simply by proxy of not yet having industry clout or external validation—but a writer’s first body of work can be some of their best, as they’ve had to pour everything into it just to get their foot in the publishing door.

What’s a book people would be surprised to see in your book collection?

My bookshelves are overflowing with an array of genres, from the classics you might assume like: Alcott, Angelou, Brontë, Babitz, Christie, Didion, Plath, and Woolf, etc. to contemporaries like Sally Rooney and Brit Bennett, but people might be surprised by my lack of modern love stories (I have a cold black heart) and the golf biographies about Tiger Woods or Out of the Rough by Steve Williams, which *surprise* belong to my husband ☺ . ■

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