Born and raised in the Germantown and Mount Airy, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, Johnson writes primarily about the lives of African-Americans, using fiction, nonfiction and graphic novels as mediums. In 2007, Johnson was named the first USA James Baldwin Fellow by the United States Artists Foundation. Mat Johnson lives in Houston, TX, where he teaches at The University of Houston Creative Writing Program.

Mat Johnson’s first novel, Drop (Bloomsbury USA in 2000), was a coming of age novel about a self-hating Philadelphian who thinks he’s found his escape when he takes a job at a Brixton-based advertising agency in London, UK. The work was a Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers selection, Interview Magazine named Johnson a “Writer on the Verge” and Drop was listed among Progressive Magazine’s “Best Novels of the Year.”

In 2003, Johnson published Hunting in Harlem (Bloomsbury USA 2003), a satire about gentrification in Harlem and an exploration of belief versus fanaticism. Hunting in Harlem won the Zora Neale Hurston/Richard Wright Legacy Award for Novel of the Year.

Johnson made his first move into the comics form with the publication of the five-issue limited series Hellblazer Special: Papa Midnite (Vertigo 2005), where he took an existing character of the Hellblazer franchise and created an origin story that strove to offer depth and dignity to a character that was arguably a racial stereotype of the noble savage. The work was set in 18th Century Manhattan, and was based around the research that Johnson was conducting for his first historical effort, The Great Negro Plot (Bloomsbury USA). The Great Negro Plot is a creative non-fiction that tells the story of the New York Slave Insurrection of 1741 and the resultant trial and hysteria.

Ethnically, Mat Johnson is considered a mulatto, octoroon, or biracial African American. Johnson is primarily of Irish and African descent. In February 2008, Vertigo Comics published Johnson's graphic novel Incognegro , a noir mystery that deals with the issue of Passing and the lynching past of the American south. The work is illustrated by British artist Warren Pleece with cover artwork by Stephen John Phillips.

From 2006 to 2007, Mat Johnson wrote the blog Niggerati Manor, which discussed African American literature and culture.

Mat Johnson attended West Chester University, University of Wales-Swansea, and ultimately received his BA from Earlham College, and in 1993, he was awarded a Thomas J. Watson Fellowship. Johnson received his MFA from Columbia University School of the Arts in 1999. Johnson has taught at Rutgers University, Columbia University, Bard College, The Callaloo Journal Writers Retreat, and is now a permanent faculty member at The University of Houston Creative Writing Program.

He was named a 2007 USA James Baldwin Fellow and awarded a $50,000 grant by United States Artists, a public charity that supports and promotes the work of American artists.

Novels

• Drop Bloomsbury USA, 2000.
• Hunting in Harlem Bloomsbury USA, 2003.

Non-fiction

• The Great Negro Plot Bloomsbury USA, 2007.

Comics

• Hellblazer Special: Papa Midnite Vertigo, 5-issue limited series, 2005, tpb, 2006, ISBN 1401210031.
• Incognegro Vertigo, graphic novel, 2008, hardcover, ISBN 140121097X.

Anthologies

• Gumbo: Anthology of African American Literature Harlem Moon, 2002.
• Mixed: An Anthology of Short Fiction on the Multiracial Experience W. W. Norton, 2006.
• Not Guilty: Twelve Black Men Speak Out on Law, Justice, and Life Amistad Press, 2002.