Brittany Johnson

Brittany Johnson is a proud Black, African American, queer woman who was raised in both the Northeast and Southeast regions of the United States—but that wasn’t always the case.

Throughout her adolescence and young adult life, she struggled with her identity and place in the world, experiences that contributed to low self-esteem and depression. Being young, creative, dark-skinned, queer, and unapologetically Black, she had to learn that if she played the role the world demanded of her, she would live a miserable, isolating existence. She knew there had to be more to life, so she held tightly to what sometimes felt like an unrequited lust for life—and the faith that things would get better. Spoiler alert: they did, but it took years of emotional, mental, and physical work to get there.

Many of the tools she used came from the fairy tales she grew up with. They became her survival guide, and without them, she may never have created a life greater than anything she once imagined. It’s because of stories like Rodgers & Hammerstein’s Cinderella (1997) and The Princess and the Frog that she was able to do what some believed she never could:

Live a life she loves, on her own terms, fueled by a creative career she built from the ground up.

The books, characters, and worlds she creates reflect those lessons, alongside the larger questions she explores daily. Everything she writes is grounded in empathy and compassion for both fictional and real-life individuals. She is especially drawn to nuance and the messy emotional in-between of our life journeys.

Ultimately, she strives to create work that encourages readers to believe they can have a happily ever after—no matter what they look like, who they love, how they identify, or where they come from. Her stories often explore themes of love, connection, loss, fate, and destiny.