“Sigrid Brown” is the pen name of Cheri Johnson and represents the part of her who stays up too late watching mysteries and has read every Harry Potter novel twelve or thirteen times. She writes mystery and YA fiction under this name.

Published in February 2022, “Sigrid’s” debut novel The Girl in Duluth was selected by Publishers Weekly for review; PW called it an “affecting debut …. Brown easily creates engagement with [her main character] June, and poetic prose is a plus …. Fans of thoughtful crime fiction will hope for more from Brown.” The Girl in Duluth won a 2023 Midwest Book Award and Mary Ann Grossman of the St. Paul Pioneer Press called the writing “gorgeous .... Why this novel wasn't snapped up by a publisher is the big mystery here."

Another “Sigrid Brown” novel, this one set in Minneapolis, is in the works, and Cheri’s literary novel Annika Rose will be published by Red Hen Press on May 21, 2024. In Annika Rose, Cheri uses ancient and contemporary myths—including both Ovid’s Metamorphoses and Ira Levin’s Rosemary’s Baby—to overlay a coming-of-age story set in remote northern Minnesota.

Raised in Lake of the Woods County in northern Minnesota, Cheri Johnson has won grants and residencies from organizations such as the McKnight Foundation, the Bush Foundation, Yaddo, and the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown. She studied writing at the University of Minnesota, Hollins University, and Augsburg University. Her chapbook of poems, Fun & Games, was published by Finishing Line Press in 2009 and she’s written two series of nonfiction books for young readers for Full Tilt Press. Crocus Hill: A Ghost Story, a literary performance project she created with the composer Julie Johnson, the filmmaker D.J. Mendel, and the new-music ensemble Zeitgeist, was supported by the Knight Foundation. She’s published fiction and other work in magazines such as Pleiades, Glimmer Train Stories, Puerto del Sol, and New South, and her novel The Girl in Duluth, which she published under the name Sigrid Brown, won a 2023 Midwest Book Award. Her novel Annika Rose won the 2022 Women’s Prose Prize from Red Hen Press and will be published in May 2024. She lives in Minneapolis, Minnesota, where she critiques manuscripts as an editor at the Loft Literary Center and writes about books and the performing arts on Instagram @CheriJohnsonArt.