Deborah Johnson was selected to receive the 2015 Harper Lee Prize for Legal Fiction. The prize is administered by the University of Alabama School of Law and the ABA Journal. Johnson is the first woman and the first African American to win the prize.
Johnson will be recognized September 3 at a ceremony held at the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C. She is being honored for her book The Secret of Magic (G.P Putnam & Sons, 2014). The novel is the story about a young woman attorney who works for Thurgood Marshall in 1946. She is asked to investigate the murder of a young Black war hero in Mississippi.
Johnson is a native of Missouri but grew up in Omaha, Nebraska. She currently resides in Columbus, Mississippi.