SHORT VERSION.

Leah Johnson is an editor, educator, and author of books for young adults. Her bestselling debut YA novel, You Should See Me in a Crown was a Stonewall Honor Book, the inaugural Reese's Book Club YA pick, and named a best book of the year by Amazon, Kirkus, Marie Claire, Publishers Weekly, and New York Public Library. Leah's essays and cultural criticism can be found in Teen Vogue, Harper's Bazaar, and Cosmo among others. 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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Leah is a 2021 Lambda Literary Emerging Writers Fellow whose work has been published or is forthcoming in BuzzFeed, Cosmo, Teen Vogue, and Harper's Bazaar among others. When she’s not writing or ranting about pop culture and politics on Twitter, Leah is a professor of creative writing and composition. Her bestselling debut YA novel, You Should See Me in a Crown was the inaugural Reese's Book Club YA pick, a 2021 Stonewall Honor Book, and was named one of Cosmo's 15 Best Young Adult Books of 2020. Her sophomore novel, Rise to the Sun is forthcoming from Scholastic in 2021.