Adam Johnson will read from his new novel The Wayfinder, followed by an on-stage conversation led by Houston author and former Houston Chronicle Book Editor Maggie Galehouse. The evening will conclude with a book sale and signing. The event is presented as part of the 2025/2026 Inprint Margarett Root Brown Reading Series.
Adam Johnson is the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Orphan Master’s Son, which The Washington Post called “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.” His other books include the story collection Fortune Smiles, winner of the National Book Award, Parasites Like Us, and Emporium. His honors include Guggenheim and NEA Fellowships, a Whiting Award, and a Stegner Fellowship. Born in South Dakota, an enrolled member of the Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe, Johnson lives in San Francisco with his wife and children and teaches creative writing at Stanford University.
He joins us with his new novel The Wayfinder, an epic historical narrative set in the Polynesian islands during the height of the Tu’i Tonga Empire. Kōrero, a young girl chosen to save her people from starvation, must brave a daring seafaring journey across a vast ocean empire. The novel evokes a world before Western influence through practices like outrigger navigation and oral storytelling. As Jennifer Egan observes, “How lucky we are that Adam Johnson has ignited for us this wild, epic, and utterly captivating skein of human history. His years of immersion in the Polynesian oral tradition and research… shimmer through The Wayfinder at every twist, but his rollicking storytelling leads the way.”
Maggie Galehouse is an award-winning local writer, editor, and researcher. She was the former book editor at the Houston Chronicle, and she has reported on education, crime, and business for a variety of newspapers. She currently works as a Program Director in the Communications Department at MD Anderson Cancer Center.
