Lynn-Steven Johanson holds a MFA degree from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln and is retired from Western Illinois University. His plays have won the Nantucket Short Play Festival, the East Valley Children’s Theatre Playwriting Contest, the Snowdance Comedy Festival, the Old Opera House's New Voices Play Festival, the Pend Oreille Playhouse's One-Act Play Festival, and the Tallahassee Writers Association's Project Stagelight Award. His plays have been produced in New York, Los Angeles, and numerous cities throughout the United States as well as in the United Kingdom, Denmark, New Zealand, Australia, India, and the Kingdom of Bahrain. He is a member of the Dramatists Guild of America, Playwright Center of Minneapolis, Sisters in Crime, and is a past president of the Mid-America Theatre Conference.

His mystery novel, Rose’s Thorn, was published in 2019 by Level Best Books, and a prequel, Havana Brown, was published in 2021. His newest novel in the series, Corrupted Souls, is scheduled for release in 2022.