Press Center

Hillary Johnson has worked as a staff reporter for Congressional Quarterly, Fairchild Publications, Women’s Wear Daily, W and Life, and was a contributing editor at Rolling Stone for a decade. She has written for the Wall Street Journal, the Christian Science Monitor, Town & Country, Mirabella, Vogue, Elle, Vanity Fair, Tatler and New York Magazine, among other publications. Her 1987 series about what was then called Chronic Epstein-Barr Virus Syndrome, commissioned by Rolling Stone, was a finalist in the reporting category at the 1988 National Magazine Awards. Besides the critically acclaimed Osler’s Web, published in 1996 by Crown, she is the author of My Mother Ruth, a memoir about the artist Ruth Jones, which was selected as one of the top ten non-fiction books of 1999 by a New Yorker magazine jury.

Veteran journalist Hillary Johnson has worked on staff or as a contributor to numerous newspapers and national magazines over her 35-year career. She was a news reporter at Life magazine and for ten years a contributing editor at Rolling Stone magazine, as well as a frequent contributor to Vanity Fair, Vogue, Town & Country, Mirabella, Elle, New York Magazine, The Wall Street Journal and the British Tatler. Her 1987 series about what was then called Chronic Epstein-Barr Virus Syndrome, commissioned by Rolling Stone, was a finalist in the reporting category at the 1988 National Magazine Awards. In 1987, she began a nine-year reporting odyssey that resulted in her critically acclaimed book, Osler’s Web: Inside the Labyrinth of the Chronic Fatigue Syndrome Epidemic. In 1999, she published My Mother Ruth, an unusual memoir about her mother, the artist Ruth Jones, which was illustrated with 42 pieces of her late mother’s art. A New Yorker magazine jury chose My Mother Ruth as one of the top ten non-fiction books of 1999.

Johnson graduated Phi Beta Kappa from the University of California at Berkeley with a degree in journalism, and received a masters degree at Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism. She is a native of Minneapolis, MN and lives in New York.

Journalist Hillary Johnson has explored the introduction of antiretroviral “cocktails” in AIDS; the use of depleted uranium weapons by the U.S. in the Gulf wars; public health threats posed by the ever-mutating influenza virus; viral causes of multiple sclerosis; air pollution-induced mortality; and health effects of the notorious toxic waste site Love Canal in Niagara Falls, N.Y. Her science reporting has appeared in Rolling Stone, where she was a contributing editor for a decade, Mirabella, Life, Self, the New York Times, Working Woman, Discover and more.

Her two-part series on what was being called “chronic Epstein-Barr viral syndrome” appeared in Rolling Stone in the summer of 1987, generating more reader mail than at any other time in Rolling Stone’s history, and was a finalist in the reporting category at the National Magazine Awards of 1988.

Soon after, Johnson began a nine-year reporting odyssey that took her to every major U.S. city, Rome, and Kyoto in preparation for writing “Oslers’ Web: Inside the Labyrinth of the Chronic Fatigue Syndrome Epidemic.” (The disease is now more appropriately called “myalgic encephalomeylitis.”) Her next book, My Mother Ruth, was a biography of her mother, the artist Ruth Jones, and was illustrated by 42 pieces of her mother’s art. It was selected by a New Yorker magazine jury as among the top ten non-fiction books of 1999.

Johnson received degrees in journalism from the University of California at Berkeley and Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism. She worked as a news reporter at the Minneapolis Tribune, Congressional Quarterly and Fairchild Publications before becoming a staff writer at Women’s Wear Daily and W in New York. She was a news reporter at Life magazine and a contributor to numerous other national publications, including The Wall Street Journal, Vogue, Town & Country, Vanity Fair, the British Tatler and New York magazine. 

She is a native of Minneapolis, MN and lives in New York.

Please request written permission from Hillary Johnson via the form above for permission to publish or use the photos below.Photo credits must read: Cynthia DelConte 2016, All Rights Reserved.