What I Saw Before the War

Alaya Dawn Johnson is an award-winning short story writer and the author of eight novels for adults and young adults. Her novel Trouble the Saints won the 2021 World Fantasy Award for best novel. Her debut short story collection, Reconstruction, was an Ignyte Award and a Hurston/Wright Legacy Award finalist. Her most recent YA novel, The Library of Broken Worlds, was nominated for the Locus Award for YA novel, won the BSFA award for Fiction for Young People, and was a finalist for the Ursula K. Le Guin prize. Her short stories have appeared in many magazines and anthologies, most notably the title story in The Memory Librarian, in collaboration with Janelle Monáe. She is currently the visiting professor in the MFA program of Queens College (CUNY), and writes essays for her newsletter, A stranger comes home (alayadj.substack.com).