Adam Johnson is Associate Professor of English with emphasis in creative writing at Stanford University. A Whiting Writers Award winner, his work has appeared in Esquire, Harpers, Playboy, GQ, Paris Review, Granta, Tin House, The New York Times and Best American Short Stories. He is the author of Emporium, a short-story collection, and the novel Parasites Like Us. His books have been translated into twenty-three languages. Johnson was a 2010 National Endowment for the Arts Fellow. His novel The Orphan Masters Son was published in 2012 by Random House and received the 2013 Pulitzer Prize in fiction. He also has been awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship for 2013-14.
Daikon (2025) Samuel Hawley "In Samuel Hawley's spellbinding debut novel, history and possibility collide. The result is a gripping, propulsive journey into the nuclear heart of what might have been. The year is 1945, and Japan's defeat is at hand. But what if they had the atomic bomb? And what if we, by mistake, had given it to them? Daikon ponders whether what's best in humanity is found only in its darkest moments. And whether love can transcend death and war. The result is a breathtaking chain reaction that unleashes the true power of the novel."
The Bombshell (2025) Darrow Farr "A lush, cinematic and propulsive novel filled with sex, violence, glamor and a true revolutionary spirit. It's a towering literary achievement. The Bombshell is certain to be the debut of the year, a true must-read."
Small Ceremonies (2025) Kyle Edwards "Heartfelt, funny, and stirring, Small Ceremonies isan astonishing debut. Luminous enough to thaw a Manitoba hockey rink, this supple, sparkling novel follows an extended Indigenous family attempting to navigate Winnipeg's difficult urban terrain. Resurrecting hope from a world of inequity and disruption, Kyle Edwards fills these pages with soulful revelation. The result is a profound meditation on longing: for what was, what might've been and what's still possible."
Dream State (2025) Eric Puchner "A masterpiece. Dream State is a glittering, evocative achievement."
Save Me, Stranger (2025) Erika Krouse "In this far-ranging and visionary collection, Krouse extends the reach of what stories can do, delivering a dozen little masterpieces of heart and longing and surprise. Save Me, Stranger is at once a treatise on tender moments and a symphony of storytelling."
Oleander City (2022) Matt Bondurant "With austere prose, compelling characters, and a gripping true story, Oleander City bears down on its characters like a category five storm, forcing three lost souls to discover who they truly are. More timely than one would think, this tale of natural catastrophe, racial injustice, and lawlessness ultimately illuminates the humanity that motivates and unites us all. A certifiable page-turner, Oleander City pulls at you with the dark undertow of an America that isn't quite bygone."
The Return of Faraz Ali (2022) Aamina Ahmad "Aamina Ahmad has done the impossible: made her literary debut with an enduring classic. Essential and compelling."
Out There (2022) Kate Folk "Kate Folk's stories inhabit otherworldly realms where exquisite language and beguiling characters excavate the very nature of love and existence."
The Last Confessions of Sylvia P. (2022) Lee Kravetz "Lee Kravetz has created a bit of a miracle, a plot-driven literary puzzle box whose mystery lives in both its winding approach to history and its wonderous story. It's a book full of ideas about inspiration and a love for language that translates across borders, physical and generational."
Mouth to Mouth (2022) Antoine Wilson "Compulsively readable. This austere and addictive novel interrogates the very nature of identity, destiny and storytelling."
The Memoirs of Stockholm Sven (2021) Nathaniel Ian Miller "Ceaselessly brilliant as an arctic sun, The Memoirs of Stockholm Sven illuminates the very nature of human yearning and perseverance. In attempting to inhabit the uninhabitable, one man shows us that no place is inhospitable to the human heart, and in delivering this searing portrait, Nathaniel Ian Miller ascends to the firmament of today's most exciting young novelists."
Skinship (2021) Yoon Choi "Think Alice Munro. Think Tobias Wolff. Think Lucia Berlin. Yoon Choi is a writer whose talents must be measured on the Richter Scale. The eight rich stories in this debut collection Skinship send tremors through our sensibilities, forcing us to reimagine the bonds that secure families, marriages, and generations. The rolling cadence of Choi's prose--at turns lovely, wise, and funny--releases her characters' voices to speak the truth of lives they'd likely never have otherwise been able to share. And what lives they are. Skinship charts the underlying power and deep humanity of those remanded to be bodega owners' wives, arranged brides, hospice workers, and caretakers, all with inner realms that cascade forth under Choi's careful gaze."
The Bear (2020) Andrew Krivák "In spare and lovely prose, Andrew Krivak folds the deep past and the far future into a remarkable fable about our inheritance as humanity makes a harmonic return to the spirit and animal worlds. This book follows you, like a river under ice."
The Verdun Affair (2018) Nick Dybek "Sometimes the true battle begins only after the fighting is over. In this case, it's the struggle to regain feeling, memory, and love in a landscape where verdancy can flourish again over graves and trenches and bones, but not over the craters of a wounded spirit. In the end, only a story can do that, but it must be as rich and poignant and compelling as Nick Dybek's immersive and atmospheric The Verdun Affair. The meaning in life often goes AWOL, and we look to our great writers-writers like Nick Dybek-to bring it back."
The Alaskan Laundry (2016) Brendan Jones "A truly towering debut novel Jones Charts new novelists territory and sends back moving dispatchers from frontiers of human heart."
The Other Joseph (2015) Skip Horack "A brilliant, gripping novel...that is as concerned with the search for the answers as it is with matters of the heart and soul."
