Adam Johnson (born July 12, 1967) is an American

novelist A novelist is an author or writer of novels, though often novelists also write in other genres of both fiction and non-fiction. Some novelists are professional novelists, thus make a living wage, living writing novels and other fiction, while othe ...

and

short story A short story is a piece of prose fiction that typically can be read in one sitting and focuses on a self-contained incident or series of linked incidents, with the intent of evoking a single effect or mood. The short story is one of the oldest t ...

writer. He won the Pulitzer Prize for his 2012 novel, ''

The Orphan Master's Son ''The Orphan Master's Son'' is a 2012 novel by American author Adam Johnson. It deals with intertwined themes of propaganda, identity, and state power in North Korea. The novel was awarded the 2013 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. Characters *Pak J ...

'', and the

National Book Award The National Book Awards are a set of annual U.S. literary awards. At the final National Book Awards Ceremony every November, the National Book Foundation presents the National Book Awards and two lifetime achievement awards to authors. The N ...

for his 2015 story collection '' Fortune Smiles''. He is also a professor of English at Stanford University with a focus on

creative writing Creative writing is any writing that goes outside the bounds of normal professional, journalistic, academic, or technical forms of literature, typically identified by an emphasis on narrative craft, character development, and the use of literar ...

Early life

Johnson was born in

South Dakota South Dakota (; Sioux language, Sioux: , ) is a U.S. state in the West North Central states, North Central region of the United States. It is also part of the Great Plains. South Dakota is named after the Lakota people, Lakota and Dakota peo ...

and was raised in

Tempe, Arizona , settlement_type = City , named_for = Vale of Tempe , image_skyline = Tempeskyline3.jpg , imagesize = 260px , image_caption = Tempe skyline as s ...

. He is part

Sioux The Sioux or Oceti Sakowin (; Dakota language, Dakota: Help:IPA, /otʃʰeːtʰi ʃakoːwĩ/) are groups of Native Americans in the United States, Native American tribes and First Nations in Canada, First Nations peoples in North America. The ...

Education

Johnson earned a BA in Journalism from

Arizona State University Arizona State University (Arizona State or ASU) is a public research university in the Phoenix metropolitan area. Founded in 1885 by the 13th Arizona Territorial Legislature, ASU is one of the largest public universities by enrollment in t ...

in 1992, though he studied principally with the fiction writer

Ron Carlson Ron Carlson (born 1947) is an American novelist, short story writer and professor. Life Carlson was born in Logan, Utah, and grew up in Salt Lake City. He received a master's degree in English from the University of Utah. He then taught at The ...

. He earned an MFA from the writing program at

McNeese State University McNeese State University is a public university in Lake Charles, Louisiana. Founded in 1939 as Lake Charles Junior College, it was renamed McNeese Junior College after John McNeese, an early local educator. The present name was adopted in 1970. M ...

in 1996, where he studied with

Robert Olen Butler Robert Olen Butler (born January 20, 1945) is an American fiction writer. His short-story collection ''A Good Scent from a Strange Mountain'' was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for fiction in 1993. Early life Butler was born in Granite City, Illin ...

and John Wood. In 2001, he earned a PhD in English from Florida State University.

Janet Burroway Janet Burroway (born September 21, 1936) is an American author. Burroway's published oeuvre includes eight novels, memoirs, short stories, poems, translations, plays, two children's books, and two how-to books about the craft of writing. Her nove ...

directed his dissertation.

Career

Johnson is currently a

San Francisco San Francisco (; Spanish language, Spanish for "Francis of Assisi, Saint Francis"), officially the City and County of San Francisco, is the commercial, financial, and cultural center of Northern California. The city proper is the List of Ca ...

writer and professor in creative writing at Stanford University. He founded the Stanford Graphic Novel Project and was named "one of the nation's most influential and imaginative college professors" by ''

Playboy ''Playboy'' is an American men's lifestyle and entertainment magazine, formerly in print and currently online. It was founded in Chicago in 1953, by Hugh Hefner and his associates, and funded in part by a $1,000 loan from Hefner's mother. K ...

'' magazine and "one of the most impressive professors at Stanford" by ''

Business Insider ''Insider'', previously named ''Business Insider'' (''BI''), is an American financial and business news website founded in 2007. Since 2015, a majority stake in ''Business Insider''s parent company Insider Inc. has been owned by the German pub ...

''. Johnson is the author of the novel ''

'' (2012), which

Michiko Kakutani Michiko Kakutani (born January 9, 1955) is an American writer and retired literary critic, best known for reviewing books for ''The New York Times'' from 1983 to 2017. In that role, she won the Pulitzer Prize for Criticism in 1998. Early life ...

, writing in ''

The New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid ...

'', called, "a daring and remarkable novel, a novel that not only opens a frightening window on the mysterious kingdom of

North Korea North Korea, officially the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK), is a country in East Asia. It constitutes the northern half of the Korean Peninsula and shares borders with China and Russia to the north, at the Yalu (Amnok) and ...

, but one that also excavates the very meaning of love and sacrifice." Johnson's interest in the topic arose from his sensitivity to the language of propaganda, wherever it occurs. Johnson also wrote the short-story collection ''

Emporium Emporium may refer to: Historical * Emporium (antiquity), a trading post, factory, or market of Classical antiquity * Emporium (early medieval), a 6th- to 9th-century trading settlement in Northwestern Europe * Emporium (Italy), an ancient town ...

'' and the novel ''

Parasites Like Us ''Parasites Like Us'' (2003) is American author Adam Johnson's debut novel. In the novel, anthropologist Dr. Hannah and his graduate students uncover a Clovis burial site, only to usher in the end of civilization. The book won a silver medal for ...

'', which won a

California Book Award The Commonwealth Club of California is a non-profit, non-partisan educational organization based in Northern California. Founded in 1903, it is the oldest and largest public affairs forum in the United States. Membership is open to everyone. Ac ...

in 2003. His work has been published in ''

Esquire Esquire (, ; abbreviated Esq.) is usually a courtesy title. In the United Kingdom, ''esquire'' historically was a title of respect accorded to men of higher social rank, particularly members of the landed gentry above the rank of gentleman ...

'', ''

Harper's Magazine ''Harper's Magazine'' is a monthly magazine of literature, politics, culture, finance, and the arts. Launched in New York City in June 1850, it is the oldest continuously published monthly magazine in the U.S. (''Scientific American'' is older, b ...

'', ''

Tin House ''Tin House'' is an American book publisher based in Portland, Oregon, and New York City. Portland publisher Win McCormack originally conceived the idea for a literary magazine called ''Tin House'' in the summer of 1998. He enlisted Holly MacArt ...

,'' and ''

The Paris Review ''The Paris Review'' is a quarterly English-language literary magazine established in Paris in 1953 by Harold L. Humes, Peter Matthiessen, and George Plimpton. In its first five years, ''The Paris Review'' published works by Jack Kerouac, Phi ...

'', as well as ''Best New American Voices'' and ''

The Best American Short Stories The Best American Short Stories yearly anthology is a part of '' The Best American Series'' published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. Since 1915, the BASS anthology has striven to contain the best short stories by some of the best-known writers in ...

''. Recently, his short story "George Orwell was a Friend of Mine" was published by 21st Editions in
The Janus Turn
' with photographs in platinum by George Tice. Johnson's work has been translated into many languages and focuses on characters at the edge of society for whom isolation and disconnection are nearly permanent conditions.

described the central theme "running through his tales is also a melancholy melody of longing and loss: a Salingeresque sense of adolescent alienation and confusion, combined with an acute awareness of the randomness of life and the difficulty of making and sustaining connections." According to

Daniel Mendelsohn Daniel Mendelsohn (born 1960), is an American author, essayist, critic, columnist, and translator. Best known for his internationally best-selling and award-winning Holocaust family memoir The Lost: A Search for Six of Six Million, he is cur ...

, writing for ''

New York New York most commonly refers to: * New York City, the most populous city in the United States, located in the state of New York * New York (state), a state in the northeastern United States New York may also refer to: Film and television * '' ...

'' magazine, "Johnson's oh-so-slightly futuristic flights of fancy, his vaguely Blade Runner–esque visions of a cluttered, anaerobic American culture, illustrate something very real, very current: the way we must embrace the unknown, take risks, in order to give flavor and meaning to life." A strain of absurdity also runs through his work, causing it to be described as "a funky new science fiction that was part irony and part pure dread." "Teen Sniper" is about young sniper prodigy enlisted by the Palo Alto police department to suppress the disgruntled workers of

Silicon Valley Silicon Valley is a region in Northern California that serves as a global center for high technology and innovation. Located in the southern part of the San Francisco Bay Area, it corresponds roughly to the geographical areas San Mateo Count ...

. "The Canadanaut" follows a remote team of Canadian weapons developers who race to beat the Russians to the moon.

Awards and honors

*1992 Swarthout Writing Award *2001 Kingsbury Fellowship *1999-2001

Stegner Fellowship The Stegner Fellowship program is a two-year creative writing fellowship at Stanford University. The award is named after American Wallace Stegner (1909–1993), a historian, novelist, short story writer, environmentalist, and Stanford faculty m ...

*2002

Amazon.com Amazon.com, Inc. ( ) is an American multinational technology company focusing on e-commerce, cloud computing, online advertising, digital streaming, and artificial intelligence. It has been referred to as "one of the most influential econom ...

Debut Writer of the Year *2002

New York Public Library The New York Public Library (NYPL) is a public library system in New York City. With nearly 53 million items and 92 locations, the New York Public Library is the second largest public library in the United States (behind the Library of Congress) ...

Young Lions Award, nominee *2003 Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers series *2005 Scholarship from Bread Loaf *2005 Scholarship from Sewanee writers' conferences *2009 Whiting Award *2010

National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship National may refer to: Common uses * Nation or country ** Nationality – a ''national'' is a person who is subject to a nation, regardless of whether the person has full rights as a citizen Places in the United States * National, Maryland, ce ...

*2010

Gina Berriault Gina Berriault (January 1, 1926 – July 15, 1999), was an American novelist and short story writer. Biography Berriault was born in Long Beach, California, to Russian-Jewish immigrant parents. Her father was a freelance writer and Berriault took ...

Literary Award. *2013

Pulitzer Prize for Fiction The Pulitzer Prize for Fiction is one of the seven American Pulitzer Prizes that are annually awarded for Letters, Drama, and Music. It recognizes distinguished fiction by an American author, preferably dealing with American life, published during ...

for ''

'' *2013

Dayton Literary Peace Prize The Dayton Literary Peace Prize is an annual United States literary award "recognizing the power of the written word to promote peace" that was first awarded in 2006. Awards are given for adult fiction and non-fiction books published at some point ...

for ''

''. *2014

Sunday Times EFG Private Bank Short Story Award The Sunday Times Short Story Award is a British literary award for a single short story open to any novelist or short story writer from around the world who is published in the UK or Ireland. The winner receives £30,000, and the five shortliste ...

for "Nirvana". *2015

National Book Award for Fiction The National Book Award for Fiction is one of five annual National Book Awards, which recognize outstanding literary work by United States citizens. Since 1987 the awards have been administered and presented by the National Book Foundation, but ...

for '' Fortune Smiles'' *2016

Story Prize The Story Prize is an annual book award established in 2004 that honors the author of an outstanding collection of short fiction with a $20,000 cash award. Each of two runners-up receives $5,000. Eligible books must be written in English and first p ...

for '' Fortune Smiles''

Bibliography

Novels * ''

'' (2003) * ''

'' (2012) Short story collections * ''

'' (2002) * '' Fortune Smiles'' (2015) * "George Orwell was a Friend of Mine" in 21st Editions
''The Janus Turn''
(2015) Story publications * "Interesting Facts" in ''

'' * "Hurricanes Anonymous" in ''

'' * "The Denti-Vision Satellite" in ''

Ninth Letter ''Ninth Letter'' is a literary magazine that publishes poetry, fiction, and nonfiction. It is an interdisciplinary collaboration between thSchool of Art + Designand the Creative Writing Program at the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign ...

'' * "Cliff Gods of Acapulco" in ''

'' * "The History of Cancer" in ''

Hayden's Ferry Review ''Hayden's Ferry Review'' is a literary magazine published biannually by Arizona State University (ASU). The magazine was established in 1986 and is headquartered in the Virginia G. Piper Center for Creative Writing at ASU. It also manages a blog ...

'' * "Watertables" in ''

The Missouri Review ''The Missouri Review'' is a literary magazine founded in 1978 by the University of Missouri. It publishes fiction, poetry, and creative non-fiction quarterly. With its open submission policy, ''The Missouri Review'' receives 12,000 manuscripts ...

'' * "The Canadanaut" in ''

'' * "Your Own Backyard" in ''

The Southeast Review Florida State University (FSU) is a public research university in Tallahassee, Florida. It is a senior member of the State University System of Florida. Founded in 1851, it is located on the oldest continuous site of higher education in the sta ...

'' * "The Death-Dealing Cassini Satellite" in ''

New England Review The ''New England Review'' is an American quarterly literary magazine published by Middlebury College. It was established in 1978 by Sydney Lea Sydney Lea (born December 22, 1942) is an American poet, novelist, essayist, editor, and professor ...

'' * "Teen Sniper" in ''

''
"Trauma Plate"
in ''

The Virginia Quarterly Review The ''Virginia Quarterly Review'' is a quarterly literary magazine that was established in 1925 by James Southall Wilson, at the request of University of Virginia president E. A. Alderman. This ''"National Journal of Literature and Discussion"' ...

'' and ''The Barcelona Review'' * "Nirvana" in ''

The Sunday Times Magazine ''The Sunday Times Magazine'' is a magazine included with ''The Sunday Times''. In 1962 it became the first colour supplement to be published as a supplement to a UK newspaper, and its arrival "broke the mould of weekend newspaper publishing". ...

''
"Dear Leader Dreams of Sushi"
in '' GQ'' * "The Third Mate" in ''Granta 116: Ten Years Later'' (Summer 2011)
"Scavengers"
in ''Granta 127: Japan'' (Spring 2014)

References

External links

Stanford profileAudio of "Trial of the Century"2012 radio interview
at

The Bat Segundo Show ''The Bat Segundo Show'' was a podcast based in New York City run by writer and literary critic Edward Champion between 2004 and 2012. It was revived in mid-2013. The program features comprehensive interviews with prominent figures in arts and ...

{{DEFAULTSORT:Johnson, Adam 1967 births Living people 21st-century American novelists Arizona State University alumni Florida State University alumni McNeese State University alumni Writers from San Francisco Stanford University Department of English faculty Novelists from Arizona Writers from South Dakota Pulitzer Prize for Fiction winners American male novelists American male short story writers National Book Award winners 21st-century American short story writers 21st-century American male writers Sioux people