Alaya Dawn Johnson

rhymes with papaya

Award-winning speculative fiction

Alaya Dawn Johnson is an award-winning author of speculative fiction for adults and young adults. Her most recent adult novel, Trouble the Saints, was the recipient of the World Fantasy Award for best novel. Her short story collection, Reconstruction, was published by Small Beer Press in January 2021. Her latest YA novel, The Library of Broken Worlds, is a finalist for the Ursula K. Le Guin award.

Check out her newsletter A stranger comes home, where subscribers receive creative non-fiction and the occasional poem about living in Mexico, writing, and surviving trauma.

Cover of the Library of Broken Worlds featuring a Black woman's hands holding a crystal ball with light breaking the glass on one side

Finalist for the Ursula K. Le Guin Award! A girl matches wits with a war god in this kaleidoscopic, thought-provoking tale of oppression and the cost of peace, where stories hide within other stories, and narrative has the power to heal — or to burn everything in its path — from World Fantasy Award-winning author […]

View Book

Cover of my short story collection Reconstruction

Ignyte Award and Hurston/Wright Legacy Award Finalist! In Reconstruction award-winning writer and musician Johnson digs into the lives of those trodden underfoot by the powers that be: from the lives of vampires and those caught in their circle in Hawai’i to a taxonomy of anger put together by Union soldiers in the American Civil War, these stories […]

View Book

Cover of Trouble the Saints. Features a mixed race woman smoking above the title and holding a plant below the title, mirrored as in a playing card

Winner of the World Fantasy Award for Best Novel! The dangerous magic of The Night Circus meets the powerful historical exploration of The Underground Railroad in this timely and unsettling novel, set against the darkly glamorous backdrop of New York City at the dawn of WWII. Amidst the whir of city life, a girl from Harlem is drawn into […]

View Book

Cover of Love Is the Drug featuring a blue background a biohazard sign and large handwritten text

Winner of the Nebula award for Best Young Adult Novel Meet Bird: Emily Bird, the straight-A student with good hair and a perfect boyfriend, with a perfect Ivy-League future laid out in front of her. But a chance meeting with a government agent — at what should have been an ordinary party of Washington DC’s […]

View Book

Hanging in, hanging on

I have been busy with my new position as the visiting professor at the MFA program of Queens College, which has been a deeply rewarding but sometimes overwhelming experience. Some writing is happening in the cracks, which is important to me. You can even read some of it in my newsletter, A stranger comes home. You can also read my recent short stories, including one published this January in Reactor Magazine, "What I Saw Before the War." But mostly what occupies my thoughts is a giant … Read More... about Hanging in, hanging on

“Johnson’s secret history is a nuanced portrait of racism in all of its poisonous flavors, brutally overt and unsuccessfully covert. She explores … the incredibly fraught, liminal space of being a light-skinned person of color. In musical prose, she also offers passionate and painful depictions of the love expressed in romance and friendship and the sacrifices such love can demand.

A sad, lovely, and blood-soaked song of a book.” — Kirkus, starred review for Trouble the Saints

“Johnson […] immerses readers in the complexities of Bird’s world, especially her fraught relationship with her parents and the intersections of race and class at her elite prep school. The often lyrical third-person, present-tense narration, the compelling romance and the richly developed cast of characters elevate this novel far above more formulaic suspense fare. Utterly absorbing.”—Kirkus, starred Review for Love Is the Drug

“Like leaping into cold water on a hot day, this original dystopian novel takes the breath away, refreshes, challenges, and leaves the reader shivering but yearning for another plunge.” — Booklist, starred review for The Summer Prince

“As the story unfolds, it becomes clear that this is a dystopia with no distinct enemy, just people fighting for what they truly see to be the right path for their community. Romantic, imaginative, and thought provoking, this is a must have for science-fiction fans and dystopia fiends.”—Bulletin of the Center for Children’s Books on The Summer Prince

About me

Photo of Alaya Dawn Johnson

Alaya Dawn Johnson was born in Washington, DC in 1982, the first of three children. Both sides of her family have extensive ties to the DC metropolitan area. Her maternal grandfather bought the family home in southeast DC in the 1930s and raised ten children there as one of the first generation of African American government employees. Her paternal grandparents raised their family between Lawrenceville, Virginia and Richmond. Johnson attended high school at the National Cathedral School for girls and college at Columbia University, where she majored in East Asian Languages and Cultures. While … Read more about About