Adam Johnson

Johnson was born in South Dakota and teaches creative writing at Stanford University; researching a novel about North Korea, he interviewed defectors extensively and secured one of the rare, tightly chaperoned visits by an American writer to Pyongyang.

The Orphan Master's Son (2012) follows Pak Jun Do, a state orphanage's designated son assigned in turn to kidnapping missions, propaganda radio work, and eventually a stolen identity impersonating a Party official, its blend of espionage plot, black comedy, and totalitarian horror built from meticulous research into a regime almost impossible to verify from outside; it won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 2013.

He has since published the story collection Fortune Smiles, which won the National Book Award, continuing to write fiction that treats extreme, underreported political realities as both intimate character study and dark satire.