Short version.

Leah Johnson is a writer, editor and eternal Midwesterner currently moonlighting as a New Yorker. She is a graduate of Indiana University and Sarah Lawrence College, where she received her MFA in fiction writing and currently teaches in the undergraduate writing program. YOU SHOULD SEE ME IN A CROWN is her first novel. 

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.

She went on to major in Journalism and African American Studies at Indiana University, and worked as a reporter covering race and class for an NPR affiliate before pursuing her MFA in fiction writing at Sarah Lawrence College. Currently, she works in editorial at Catapult and teaches creative writing and composition to undergraduate students in and around New York City. 

Photo: Courtesy of Reece T. Williams