Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist and Florida State University doctoral alumnus Adam Johnson held his homecoming event and book discussion in FSU’s Williams-Johnson Building on Feb. 12. Each ticket holder received a copy of his first novel in over 13 years, “The Wayfinder,” which follows a young Tongan girl on a sea voyage to save her people from starvation.
As a winner of the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award, Johnson has much to boast about. Even so, he used his homecoming as an opportunity to speak almost exclusively about history, and the people whose stories shaped his 700-page epic set a thousand years ago.
“I think that we’re very lucky to have these kinds of events. This is what we’re paying for,” creative writing PhD candidate Noah Farberman said to the FSView. “It’s not exactly learning Old English, but it’s the learning that we’re here for.”
Johnson illustrates the importance of history
The event, which was hosted by Midtown Reader, surprised audiences when it started with a photo of a globe. The five-foot sphere housed at Stanford University’s library was projected on the screen. Johnson pointed to Easter Island and swept his hand west, illustrating just how far it sits from the nearest landmass. Before discussing plots or characters from “The Wayfinder,” Johnson delivered a sweeping history of Polynesian survival.
Johnson started the discussion with the island of Tonga, a 1,400-mile open-ocean voyage from New Zealand, and the staggering feats of ancient wayfinders who crossed the Pacific without modern instruments.
“All people have to learn to be better inhabitants of the land,” Johnson said to the audience.
This warning was not abstract. With the detail only a writer can sustain, Johnson described the extinction of the moa in New Zealand: they were towering, 500-pound birds hunted to their demise by early human settlers. The room fell rather silent as he bridged past and present, speaking of the way modern loss often fails to announce itself loud enough to be stopped because so few care to listen.
“This history is happening right now,” Johnson said. “If you don’t know the name of a bird, you don’t know when it’s gone.”
Johnson questioned whether a 12th-century text sitting on a shelf should automatically be trusted over oral histories passed down through generations, particularly those of indigenous communities whose knowledge systems were long dismissed.
“We live in a time of great amnesia,” Johnson said. “Great forgetting. We’ve uploaded our collective knowledge to Wikipedia. But we owe it to ourselves to question what stories must we repeat.”
‘The Wayfinder’ highlights Polynesian survival
Set in the Polynesian islands almost a millennium ago, the novel blends historical fact with myth and elements of the fantastical, including narrating animals, while centering on environmental stewardship and political upheaval. In Johnson’s telling, the only way the main character Kōreo can expand her knowledge is to learn from “the takers,” those who have stolen from her people.
There was unmistakable affection in the way Johnson described his research process. He spoke of years spent studying navigation traditions, oral histories, and environmental records — an immersion that mirrors his academic life as a professor of English at Stanford University.
“I like that he talked so much about his research,” creative writing PhD candidate Helen Brower said to the FSView. “Because it is such an interesting thing to not speak about a culture, but to bring stories from a culture that is not your own to life. He had a really good line, ‘nobody writes about North Korea when they’re the most voiceless people of our time. Why not give my voice to the voiceless?’ And on top of that, he has … over 12 years of research on the topic.”
Johnson’s earlier Pulitzer-winning novel, “The Orphan Master’s Son,” focused on North Korea, another topic marked by political silence and restricted narratives. The throughline of amplifying the marginalized while grounding fiction in extensive research continued in “The Wayfinder.”
Students inspired by Johnson’s oration, storytelling
For many students in attendance, the event felt less like a standard book tour and more like an extension of education.
“The event was so incredibly engaging,” Creative Writing MFA student Sarah Vedder said to the FSView. “So informative. Adam Johnson is such an incredible storyteller and we’ve been introduced to his writing throughout my creative writing career since undergrad. I’m really excited to read the book.”
If forgetting is easy, Johnson suggests remembering requires repetition of names, of stories, and of the knowledge systems that are at risk of being lost. In a world he described as one of “great amnesia,” that act of repetition may be the most urgent work fiction can do.
“I feel that it’s rare to get someone who’s a good speaker and a good writer. We got really lucky today with Adam coming through,” Farberman said.
Kierra Keegan is a Staff Writer for the FSView & Florida Flambeau, the student-run, independent online news service for the FSU community. Email our staff at [email protected].
