The Black Authors Who Paved the Way for Leah Johnson

Everything I write—everything that I do— is made possible by the Black thinkers, artists, activists, and spacemakers who came before me. Let my life, and these stories, always be a testament to the radical joy and the endless tenacity that I inherited from them.

Jacqueline Woodson

No conversation about what Black or queer children’s literature has become is complete without first paying homage to Jacqueline Woodson. The space she has created for those of us who came after her is something I’ll never be able to thank her enough for.

Nicola Yoon

By the time Nicola’s first novel, Everything, Everything, came out, I had long since aged out of YA. But there’s no understating the impact that seeing a Black girl being loved so completely and so tenderly had on me, even into my adulthood. Nicola remains one of my instant-buy authors to this day.

Zora Neale Hurston

In Their Eyes Were Watching God, Zora Neale Hurston rendered the Black experience in a way I’d never seen before—complicated, flawed, whole. It changed my understanding of what Black literature could be. We owed her so much more honor than she received in her lifetime, but her legacy lives now in each of us who were transformed by her life and her work.