Josephine W. Johnson

Josephine W. Johnson (1910 - 1990) was the author of eleven books of fiction, poetry, and essays. She won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1935 at age 24 for her first novel, Now in November.

Johnson was born June 20, 1910, in Kirkwood, Missouri. She attended Washington University, but did not earn a degree. She wrote Now In November while living in her mother's attic in Webster Groves, Missouri. She married Grant G. Cannon, editor in chief of the Farm Quarterly, in 1942. The couple moved to Iowa City, where she taught at the University of Iowa for three years, before they then moved to Hamilton County, Ohio. Johnson stayed in the Cincinnati area until her death from pneumonia on February 27, 1990.