Eva Johnson

Eva Knowles Johnson (born 1946) is an Aboriginal Australian poet, actor, director and playwright. Early life Eva Knowles Johnson belongs to the Malak Malak people and was born in 1946 at Daly River in the Northern Territory. At the age of two, Johnson was taken from her mother and placed on a Methodist Mission on Croker Island and at the age of 10 was transferred to an orphanage in Adelaide. Career Johnson worked as an enrolled nurse and studied community development at the South Australian Institute of Technology and a degree in Aboriginal studies at the University of Adelaide. Johnson has worked as a poet, actor, director, playwright and teacher. She began writing in 1979. Her first poem became the title of the first play ever produced by Black Theatre in Adelaide, When I Die You'll All Stop Laughing. Johnson contributed to the representation of Aboriginal women on the stage. Johnson's writing addresses themes of cultural identity, Aboriginal Australian women's rights, the stolen generation, land rights, slavery, sexism and homophobia. Johnson played the part of Alice Wilson (credited as Eva Birrit) in the fourth segment of the 1981 award-winning series Women of the Sun.