Adam Johnson's Bio

Okay, I'll be the first to post a bio. I'm from Arizona, but I went to grad school in Louisana and Florida, so I like warm places. San Francisco is the coldest place I've ever lived. I really dig writing, though I came to it late, when I got to college. After high school, I spent a few years working construction and things like that. So when I got to college, I was a couple years older and didn't know who Kirosawa was and had never read Kafka. I've been trying to catch up ever since. A fiction writing course really changed my life. I was not so bad at it, but mostly I somehow took all the things people had criticized me for (daydreaming, lying, rubbernecking, and worst of all, exaggerating) and combined them all to make something good: a story. So when it comes to writing, I've always favored labor over talent, and I've always sought to demystify narrative by examining all its moving parts. I came to Stanford as a stegner fellow in 1999, published my first book in 2002, and fell in love with teaching classes here. I'm now an associate professor, and my third book, set in North Korea, was published last year. My wife and I have three kids: James, 10; Jupiter, 8; and Justice Everlasting, 7.