Kawai Strong Washburn

Kawai Strong Washburn is an American novelist born in Hamakua, Hawaii, best known for his debut novel Sharks in the Time of Saviors (2020), which won the 2021 PEN/Hemingway Award and Minnesota Book Award, was longlisted for the Center for Fiction First Novel Prize, and named a favorite book of 2020 by Barack Obama. He works as a software engineer and lives in Minneapolis with his family; his second novel, The Names of the New World, is forthcoming in 2026.