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Schools

Scholar Adam Johnson Wins Pulitzer Prize in Fiction

Associate professor of English is honored for his best-selling novel, "The Orphan Master's Son."

Adam Johnson, an associate professor of English at Stanford, has been awarded the Pulitzer Prize for fiction for The Orphan Master's Son, his novel set in North Korea.

The Pulitzer committee called the book "an exquisitely crafted novel that carries the reader on an adventuresome journey into the depths of totalitarian North Korea and into the most intimate spaces of the human heart."

Johnson spent several years researching the book, his third, reading historical accounts and propaganda about the isolated country. He also read personal narratives from the few people who have defected and managed to visit North Korea under a tightly controlled state-sponsored trip.

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In an interview with his editor at the end of the book, Johnson described how he thought about crafting the story and the main character.

"Much is written about the political, military, and economic aspects of the DPRK, but it was always the personal dimension that interested me. I wondered how families huddled under such repression and how people maintained their identities against the tide of propaganda, and whether lovers, despite the dangers, shared their intimate thoughts," he said. "So, from the beginning, my goal in this book was to create a single character that felt fully human to me."

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Johnson, who came to Stanford in 1999, is the author of Emporium, a short-story collection, and the novel Parasites Like Us, which won a California Book Award. His books have been translated into 16 languages. He was also a 2010 National Endowment for the Arts Fellow.

He teaches the courses Fiction, Creative Non-Fiction, The Novel Salon and The Graphic Novel.

Professor Eavan Boland, who directs Stanford's Creative Writing Program, said she and her colleagues are thrilled for Johnson's honor.

"This is a wonderful recognition for a wonderful achievement," Boland said. "And he has so many admirers and friends in this program who will be absolutely delighted and not at all surprised."

Johnson's award comes after a year in which no prize was given in the fiction category. Last year's absence in fiction angered many booksellers and publishers. It was the first time the fiction prize had not been awarded since 1977.

Previous authors who have won the distinguished fiction Pulitzer include Wallace Stegner, who founded Stanford's Creative Writing Program, and N. Scott Momaday, a former faculty member of Stanford's English Department. --Stanford News Service 



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