Commemorative Speaker George Johnson

The Black History Month Committee invites journalist and LGBTQIA+ activist George M. Johnson to campus.

George Johnson is an award-winning Black non-binary writer, author and executive producer located in the LA area. They are the author of the New York Times bestselling YA memoir “All Boys Aren’t Blue,” discussing their adolescence growing up as a young Black queer boy in New Jersey through a series of powerful essays. The book was optioned for television by Gabrielle Union.

As a former journalist, George has written for major outlets including Teen Vogue, Entertainment Tonight, NBC and Buzzfeed. In 2019, they were awarded the Salute to Excellence Award by the National Association of Black Journalists for their article, “When Racism Anchors Your Health,” in Vice magazine.

George was listed on The Root 100 Most Influential African Americans in 2020, the Out 100 Most Influential LGBTQ People in 2021, and in 2022 was honored as one of the TIME100 Next Most Influential People in the World.

Their second memoir, “We Are Not Broken,” was released in September of 2021. It received the Carter G. Woodson Award, which recognizes books that “accurately and sensitively depict the experience of one or more historically marginalized racial/ethnic groups in the United States”. The book also received the Nonfiction Honor Book in the YA category from the International Literacy Association.

In 2021, they wrote and executive produced the dramatic reading of “All Boys Aren’t Blue,” starring Jenifer Lewis and Dyllon Burnside, which received a 2022 Special Recognition Award from GLAAD.

George is also a proud HBCU alum twice over, and a member of Alpha Phi Alpha Fraternity Incorporated.

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