Kawai Strong Washburn book launch

ABOUT THE BOOK

The highly anticipated second novel from the award-winning author Kawai Strong Washburn: an extraordinary saga of resilience and ambition in the face of a chaotic world.

A ferocious superstorm strikes Minneapolis, leveling large swaths of the city in a matter of minutes. In the storm’s wake, three people forge an unlikely bond that will shape their lives for the next twenty five years: Naomi, a disillusioned lawyer by day and amateur MMA fighter by night, searching for the meaning she’s lost after migrating from Hawai‘i; Amaré, an up-by-the-bootstraps investment banker with grand designs for all the money he’s about to make; and Raheem, a diesel mechanic nearly paralyzed by the storm and struggling to save his business.

Following his acclaimed debut, Sharks in the Time of Saviors, Kawai Strong Washburn again turns his remarkable gift of mythic sight to the oceans and landscapes we so often overlook in the name of progress. Spanning two decades and ranging from the American Midwest to the nation’s halls of power to islands across the Pacific, The Names of the New World is a startling, energetic, and optimistic vision of how to live in this era of overwhelming change.

ABOUT THE ARTISTS

Kawai Strong Washburn was born and raised on the Hāmākua coast of the Big Island of Hawai‘i. Today, he lives with his wife and daughters in Minneapolis. Sharks in the Time of Saviors, his first novel, was a New York Times Notable Book and winner of the PEN/Hemingway Award.

Claire Wahmanholm is the author of three poetry collections, including Meltwater (Milkweed Editions 2023), which was a finalist for the 2024 Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award, the 2024 Minnesota Book Award, and was a 2025 National Book Foundation Science + Literature selection. Her fourth collection, Cosmorama, is forthcoming from Milkweed Editions in 2028.