PREMIER EVENT: ADAM JOHNSON in conversation with OSCAR VILLALON


Credit: Samson Yee

 

 

 

 

 

 

PREMIER EVENT: Adam Johnson in conversation with Oscar Villalon

Wednesday, August 19, 7:30 p.m.

Fortune Smiles

 

Winner of the Pulitzer Prize for his acclaimed novel The Orphan Master’s Son, Adam Johnson is one of America’s most provocative and powerful authors. Critics have compared him to Kurt Vonnegut, David Mitchell, and George Saunders, but Johnson’s new book will only further his reputation as one of our most original writers. Subtly surreal and darkly comic, Fortune Smiles is a major collection of stories that gives voice to the perspectives we don’t often hear. In six masterful stories, Johnson delves deep into love and loss, natural disasters, the influence of technology, and how the political shapes the personal. 
 
Among the collection’s unforgettable characters are a woman with cancer who rages against the idea of her family living on without her and, in a return to his signature subject of North Korea, two defectors from Pyongyang trying to adapt to their new lives in Seoul, one of whom cannot forget the woman he left behind. In “George Orwell Was a Friend of Mine,” the former warden of a Stasi prison in East Germany vehemently denies his past, even as pieces of it are delivered in mysterious packages to his door. “Nirvana,” which won the prestigious Sunday Times short story prize, portrays a programmer whose wife has a rare disease finding solace in a digital simulacrum of the president of the United States. “Hurricanes Anonymous,” first included in the Best American Short Stories anthology, depicts a young man searching for the mother of his son in a Louisiana devastated by Hurricanes Katrina and Rita. As unnerving as they are riveting, these stories confirm Johnson as one of our greatest writers, and as our indispensable guide to a new century.
 
Adam Johnson is the author of The Orphan Master’s Son, winner of the Pulitzer Prize in fiction, the Dayton Literary Peace Prize, and the California Book Award, and finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award. It was named one of the best books of the year by more than a dozen publications. His previous books are Emporium, a short story collection, and the novel Parasites Like Us. Johnson teaches creative writing at Stanford.
 
Oscar Villalon is the managing editor of ZYZZYVA, the acclaimed San Francisco literary journal celebrating its 30th anniversary this year. The former book editor at the San Francisco Chronicle and a former board member of the National Book Critics Circle, he's a contributing editor at the Literary Hub.
Event date: 
Wednesday, August 19, 2015 - 7:30pm
Event address: 
1010 El Camino Real
Menlo Park, CA 94025-4349
The Orphan Master's Son: A Novel By Adam Johnson Cover Image
$18.00
ISBN: 9780812982626
Availability: In Stock at Kepler's Now
Published: Random House Trade Paperbacks - August 7th, 2012

Emporium: Stories By Adam Johnson Cover Image
$16.00
Not available
ISBN: 9780142001950
Published: Penguin Books - March 25th, 2003

Parasites Like Us: A Novel By Adam Johnson Cover Image
$17.00
Not available
ISBN: 9780142004777
Published: Penguin Books - October 26th, 2004

Fortune Smiles: Stories By Adam Johnson Cover Image
$27.00
Not available
ISBN: 9780812997477
Published: Random House - August 18th, 2015