“It’s not the job of the writer to create characters that...

“It’s not the job of the writer to create characters that readers like, necessarily, but we do have to create a character readers can invest in.”

—Leah Johnson is a writer, editor and eternal Midwesterner, currently moonlighting as a New Yorker. She is a 2021 Lambda Literary Emerging Writers Fellow whose work has been published in BuzzFeed, Autostraddle, Catapult, and Electric Literature, among others. Her bestselling debut YA novel, You Should See Me in a Crown, was named one of Cosmo‘s 15 Best Young Adult Books of 2020, and was an Indies Introduce and Junior Library Guild selection. Her sophomore novel, Rise to the Sun, is forthcoming from Scholastic in 2021.

Do you usually write likable characters? Let Leah know, and/or thank her for her #CampCarePackage!

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Background quote photo by Fabiola Peñalba on Unsplash.