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Alaya Dawn Johnson is an award-winning author of speculative fiction for adults and young adults. Her most recent novel, Trouble the Saints, is out from Tor as of July 2020. Her short story collection, Reconstruction, is forthcoming from Small Beer Press in November of 2020.
She publishes a monthly newsletter via TinyLetter, which you can subscribe to here. It features writing advice, observations of life and eating in Mexico, and, of course, the latest news of her publications.
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 the glittering underworld of Manhattan, where she’s hired to […]
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 […]
Longlisted for the National Book Award and nominated for the Nebula award for best Young Adult novel, the Indie’s Choice Award and winner of the Cybils award Four hundred years in the future, in a world remade by plague and nuclear disaster, a young artist and a Summer King plot revolutionary art in the pyramid […]
The first novel of the Spirit Binders trilogy. In Racing the Dark, the first act in a grand dance of loyalty, love, sacrifice, and death is about to begin, set in a land of volcanoes and earthquakes, plagues and typhoons, of island nations separated by water but bound by fear of the spirits they imprison […]
As of Tuesday, July 21st, my first novel in six years, Trouble the Saints, is published and available wherever books are sold! I am so proud of this book and so excited for you to be able to read the product of so much effort and love. Kirkus Reviews has given it a starred review, calling it a "sad, lovely, blood-soaked song of a book." It comes recommended by N.K. Jemisin and Kelly Link, so don't take my word for it! Please support your local bookstores if you can in these difficult times. … Read More... about Trouble the Saints is out!
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 father grew up in Lawrenceville, Virginia. 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 studying abroad Japan, she hitchhiked … Read more about About