Initially trained as a journalist, Adam Johnson left reporting early in his career to explore more creative endeavors. This decision eventually led him to a Pulitzer Prize.

Johnson won a Pulitzer in 2013 for his book “The Orphan Master’s Son,” a piece of fiction set inside North Korea. On Wednesday night, Johnson visited Dartmouth’s Barnes & Noble to discuss his latest book, which was released this past summer.

“My new collection, ‘Fortune Smiles,’ is six short stories, but the book’s 300 pages, so they’re all meaty works,” he said. “I do feel like each of these I could have spun into a novel, but instead I tried to do the opposite and condensed novel-worthy characters into stories.”

He read an excerpted version of the first story from his collection. “Nirvana,” named after the early ‘90s grunge band, features dark humor and sci-fi themes.

One of the main protagonists has been paralyzed and now only finds comfort in music and marijuana. The story explores the changing nature of her relationship with her husband and the way in which the futuristic technology of their world influences their lives.

Johnson said these seemingly disparate story elements were based on situations in his own life. Several years ago, his wife was receiving chemotherapy treatments and he felt inspired to write about health issues. At the same time, a college friend who loved listening to Nirvana’s music, committed suicide.

“To me, my stories feel very literal and very real,” said Johnson.

He said that, while some authors will try to weave a narrative in such a way that everything ties together in the end, his work is more ambiguous.

“Sometimes the happy and the sad come together,” he said. “I’ll put conflicting things in the story together, and, at the end, you’re not sure what to make of it or how to feel. Those feel more true to life to me. It’s those endings I’ll think about for days.”

Johnson currently teaches creative writing at Stanford University. Before attaining a doctorate in English, he received a bachelor’s in journalism.

“I was trained as a journalist. Luckily, I didn’t become one. It wasn’t quite me,” said Johnson.

He said that, as a young person, his ambition was to tell the biggest story that he could. Journalistic writing was too restrictive for the tales he wanted to tell.

“I was trying to hold a higher duty to storytelling than journalism was capable of allowing,” he said.

However, as he developed as a writer, many techniques taught in journalism school – such as interviewing and extensive research – have become critical to the way he writes stories today. For instance, in “Nirvana,” he learned about medical equipment during his wife’s stay at the hospital. This information became details found throughout the short story.

Likewise, his Pulitzer Prize-winning novel required extensive research. He would obsessively read about North Korea and its inhabitants. This culminated in a visit to the country, which he said gave him a sense of everyday life.

“Now there’s a lot of fact in my fiction,” he said.