SHORT VERSION.

Leah Johnson (she/her) is a writer, editor and eternal Midwesterner, currently moonlighting as a New Yorker. Leah is a 2021 Lambda Literary Emerging Writers Fellow whose work has been published in BuzzFeed, Autostraddle, Catapult, and Electric Literature among others. Her bestselling debut YA novel, You Should See Me in a Crown was named one of Cosmo's 15 Best Young Adult Books of 2020, and was an Indies Introduce and Junior Library Guild selection. Her sophomore novel, Rise to the Sun is forthcoming from Scholastic in 2021.

Photo: Courtesy of Reece T. Williams

SLIGHTLY LESS SHORT VERSION.

Leah Johnson was born and raised in Indianapolis, Indiana—a tried and true, lifelong Hoosier (and as you can perhaps imagine, much of her work now features more cornfields and soybeans than any one human has business writing about). She began her writing career with a spiral notebook full of short stories in Mrs. Peacock's fifth-grade class and could never quite bring herself to stop.
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This summer, Leah will be a visiting writer at New England College and is currently a staff contributing editor at Catapult. She is 2021 Lambda Literary Emerging Writers Fellow whose work has been published or is forthcoming in BuzzFeed, Autostraddle, Catapult, and Electric Literature among others. When she’s not writing or ranting about pop culture and politics on Twitter, Leah teaches creative writing and composition to undergraduate students in and around New York City. Her bestselling debut YA novel, You Should See Me in a Crown was an Indies Introduce and Junior Library Guild selection. Her sophomore novel, Rise to the Sun is forthcoming from Scholastic in 2021.