the short bio
Leah Johnson is an eternal midwesterner and author of award-winning books for children and young adults. Her bestselling debut YA novel, You Should See Me in a Crown, was a Stonewall Honor Book, and the inaugural Reese's Book Club YA pick. In 2021, TIME named You Should See Me in a Crown one of the 100 Best Young Adult Books of All Time. Her debut middle grade, Ellie Engle Saves Herself was published by Disney-Hyperion in May 2023. When she’s not writing, you can find her at Loudmouth Books, her Indianapolis-based independent bookstore that specializes in highlighting the work of marginalized authors and uplifting banned or challenged books.
Slightly less short bio.
Leah Johnson was born and raised in central 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. That love of storytelling eventually carried her to Sarah Lawrence College for her MFA in fiction writing, and to Brooklyn to live amongst every other struggling writer.
Leah’s bestselling debut YA novel, You Should See Me in a Crown was the inaugural Reese's Book Club YA pick, a Stonewall Honor Book, a Junior Library Guild Selection, an ALA Rainbow List Top Ten selection, and was named one of Cosmopolitan's 15 Best Young Adult Books of 2020. Kirkus called Crown “[A] pitch-perfect rom-com… the queer prom romance you didn’t know you needed," and her mom called it “A real book!” It was featured on a number of Best of the Year lists including: Cosmopolitan, Amazon, Kirkus, Marie Claire, Publishers Weekly, and New York Public Library. The first installment of her debut middle grade series, Ellie Engle Saves Herself was sold in an eleven-house, seven-figure auction to Disney-Hyperion, and is slated for publication in spring 2023.
In 2020, Leah was chosen as a Publishers Weekly Flying Start, and her debut novel named an Indies Introduce pick by the American Booksellers Association. In 2021, USA Today listed Leah as one of 50 Must-Read Black YA Writers, and TIME named You Should See Me in a Crown one of the 100 Best Young Adult Books of All Time. Leah is a Lambda Literary Emerging Writers Fellow whose work has been published or is forthcoming in BuzzFeed, Cosmopolitan, Teen Vogue, and Harper's Bazaar among others. When she’s not writing, you can find her at Loudmouth Books, her Indianapolis-based independent bookstore that specialized in highlighting the work of marginalized authors and uplifting banned or challenged books.
