Young readers’ literature superstar Leah Johnson is committed to using her considerable powers for good.

Since we last spoke in 2021, the bestselling, award-winning author of You Should See Me in a Crown published her first middle-grade novel (Ellie Engle Saves Herself), founded an independent bookstore in response to book-banning attacks on titles by BIPOC and queer authors (Loudmouth Books), judged the 2024 National Book Award for Young People’s Literature, and edited an exquisite anthology for Freedom Fire, a Disney imprint devoted to stories about the Black diaspora by Black creators.

“It’s a big statement,” Johnson says of the decision to put Black Girl Power: 15 Stories Celebrating Black Girlhood (Freedom Fire/Disney, Nov. 12) on Freedom Fire’s launch list, along with books by Tracey Baptiste and publisher Kwame Mbalia. “When they wanted to set the tone for what the rest of this imprint was going to be, they chose power.”

Johnson got a roster of A-listers to bring their A-game to the anthology—including Ibi Zoboi, Renée Watson, cover artist Vashti Harrison, Sharon Flake, Sharon M. Draper, and Dhonielle Clayton. The result is an “electric” collection, as Kirkus writes in a starred review of Black Girl Power, praising the book’s “confidence-building stories that sizzle with wisdom and a little bit of magic.”

Johnson recently discussed Black Girl Power with Kirkus via Zoom; our conversation has been edited for length and clarity.

What aspects of Black girlhood did you want to explore in these varied, vivid stories?

I wanted us to highlight the beauty and the strength of Black girlhood, the magic and the mundane. We have a lot of experiences [in the book] that are really typical coming-of-age experiences. What does it mean to go to my first sleepover but feel like I’m being left out? What does it mean to have this dream and not know if I’m going to be able to achieve it? These narratives are universal but so rarely given the time and the space to shine when it comes to us Black girls. And there’s something extraordinary about being able to chronicle those experiences in fiction.

This collection really brought me back, and had me remembering middle school as a transitional time. That line between babyhood and being a teen is so perilous to navigate. I remember feeling like the one person who just didn’t get it—like, everyone else got the memo that we’re dressing like this now, we’re acting like this now. That was so real to me.

It’s so funny. I remember, years ago—and it probably is still a conversation in the bookish internet somewhere—people asking, “Is there an age at which people should stop writing YA or middle grade, because you’re so far away from it?” I always thought that was such a strange line of thinking. Who among us, in their adulthood, doesn’t have that same feeling of maybe you just didn’t get the memo about something that everybody else seems to have already figured out? It’s not only universal in that it transcends race and gender—and, you know, arbitrary lines of nation-states—but also age. I feel like so many of these experiences are incredibly resonant to me as an adult, and that’s why it’s such a joy to be able to continue to write them—and, in this anthology, curate them. How many different ways can we talk about how hard and how incredible it is to be a preteen or tween girl? These stories are resonant for so many people but specific to Black girls in a way that I haven’t seen before.

The story that opens this collection is “The New Rules” by Elise Bryant. What were some of the qualities that made you want to lead off with that one?

It really set the tone for what the rest of the anthology was going to be, which is honest and humorous, and also deeply cringy. That’s the thing about being a tween that I can never get away from. It’s mortifying to be a human in a body at any age but particularly that age when you’re just now adjusting to what it means to live inside of this new body, and your brain is changing in ways that you can’t always keep up with.

The collection ends with your story “Brave.” Where did that come from? How long did it take to write? Is it an idea you had for this anthology, specifically? Or did you write it in response to the pieces you were receiving? Tell us all about it.

Oh, I love that question. Usually, if I’m contributing to an anthology, I’ll sit and knock out my short story contribution in one sitting. It’s not something that I return to over and over again. But this is one of those stories where it took me a while to figure out what exactly I was trying to say and how I was trying to say it.

It’s worth noting that, well, I am the anthologist. But we have an editor at Disney, obviously, who also worked with us on this. And [editor Ashley Fields] is the one who said, “This is how we’re going to end the anthology.” And I said, “Maybe we should get somebody more famous.” I was like, “Do you know Ibi is in this collection? Let’s really end it with a bang!” But she was like, “No, girl, you’ve got all the bang we need.”

When I was a kid, I was diagnosed with ITP, which is idiopathic thrombocytopenic purpura, an immune blood disorder. So, my earliest memories are of getting transfusions in the same wing of the hospital where they were treating cancer patients. This is a real story; this was what it was like for me. I was slightly younger, but the rage [I felt] is something that we don’t always get to see in Black girls without punishment. I wanted to have a character who was allowed to be angry and to acknowledge that softness does not equal weakness. That felt like a strong message to leave the anthology on: that you’re permitted to be flawed, and permitted to be angry, and also permitted to be sad and scared. Those things are all valid, and you should be given the grace and the space to acknowledge those feelings.

Where did the idea for Black Girl Power originally come from?

We’re building on a really interesting foundation. We got to create this anthology to mirror, in many ways, what Kwame had already done in Black Boy Joy [2019]. I’m so grateful that these [stories] get to be in conversation with each other, because they are singular. They’re unlike any other books that I got to read when I was a kid, and, in that way, Black Girl Power has done something for me, personally, that’s immeasurable. I hope it will have that effect on the young people who pick it up—and the young at heart, who maybe still need to learn some of the lessons that our characters are learning in the book. Shoutout to Kwame for giving us that blueprint to work from, and also to Freedom Fire for creating the space for Black Girl Power in its first season of titles.

Editor at large Megan Labrise hosts the Fully Booked podcast.