Adam Johnson

The Orphan Master's Son follows a North Korean orphan through a tunnel unit, a kidnapping operation and a prison mine, and it took the Pulitzer in 2013. Johnson visited the country once on a controlled tour and built the rest from defector testimony and state propaganda, which he has been open about as a limitation rather than a credential. Fortune Smiles, a story collection, added a National Book Award two years later. He teaches at Stanford, and worked construction and as a night clerk before any of it.