Kawai Strong Washburn’s New Novel Predicted the Super El Niño

BooksKawai Strong Washburn’s New Novel Predicted the Super El NiñoSo why is the celebrated Minneapolis author so hopeful? By Deborah Copperud8:59 AM CDT on October 7, 2026Add Racket to GoogleProvidedOn an overcast, mid-70s morning in August, one monarch butterfly flits through an incongruous floral fusion of crimson roses and sunny black-eyed Susans on the boulevard in front of The Brothers Cafe on Lyndale Avenue. I’m waiting for Minneapolis writer Kawai Strong Washburn to arrive by bicycle. KSW (I’m making this a thing) is an award-winning author and social justice activist with a new novel, the follow-up to his first big-deal book, 2007’s Obama-bumped Sharks In the Time of Saviors. The plot of The Names of the New World (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 448 pages) is drenched in climate disaster. In anticipation of our conversation, I’ve paid extra attention to headlines I’d rather skip: Lala pounding Hawaii, drought evaporating Lake Mead, the Bear Trap fire scorching the Superior National Forest.The butterfly triggers my solastalgia, a contemporary psychological phenomenon KSW describes in Names as, “The feeling that things you loved were already on a path of undeniable loss that you had no way to prevent, so the good-bye was already happening, the goodbye was every day alive.” In the not-so-distant past, migrating monarchs coated the tree branches in the backyard of my childhood home in southwest Minnesota. Orange-and-black wings covered every leaf. Flutters filled the air under the maples and ash. Now, no matter how much milkweed and blazing star I seed in my Minneapolis backyard, only scant handfuls of the pretty insects show up. Habitat loss, oversalted roads, and neonicotinoid insecticide are responsible for their drastic diminishment, all things I can’t control.Just in time to interrupt my monarch sorrow, KSW rolls up on a sleek road bike in Ray-Bans, black skateboard sneakers without socks, grey nylon shorts with keys dangling from a belt loop, and an employer-swag laptop backpack. He’s 6-feet-tall and 20th-century skinny, his body free from ultraprocessed snacks, red meat, and car commute abuse, kept slim by rock climbing and cycling. He wears an Apple Watch, diamond stud earrings, an etched silver wedding band, and a tattoo on his inner right upper arm. Inside a sheltered booth that’s ideal for conversation recording, KSW scans the eggs-and-bacon heavy diner menu. Nothing appeals. He used to be vegan, now he’s vegetarian. He politely says he’s not hungry. We order a matcha latte and coffee.KSW has high cheekbones and short dark hair with a bleached streak in the front. We’re the same age—46—and my hairline’s going silver in the same place. Is the blonde hiding grey? “No,” he says, “It’s just a fun way to stay creative.” A highlight is cheaper hair flair than the cornrows he used to maintain and less boring than the Caesar cut he had before his last grow-out. His short-sleeved, slate-blue collared shirt with palm-tree print looks tailored. KSW bought the aloha shirt on his last trip to his home state from a custom made-to-order apparel company called Olomana.KSW grew up in Honoka’a, a former sugar plantation town on Hawaii’s Big Island, in a blended family with mainlander parents. His mother, who is Black and grew up in Kansas City, Missouri, moved to the island seeking relief from continental U.S. racism. His father, who is white and from Oklahoma, went for a graduate program in music composition and ended up spending his career at Honoka’a High School. As a music educator, Gary Washburn earned a “Living Treasure of Hawaii” distinction from the Hawaii State Senate and a Grammy Signature Schools Award. KSW has an older half brother, an older brother, and a step-brother and step-sister, twins his same age. His grandparents moved from Oklahoma to the Big Island when he was a kid, and KSW’s grandmother would drive him to the nearest bookstore, 40 miles away in Hilo, to buy him Michael Crichton novels and Anne McCaffrey’s Dragonriders of Pern series. After high school KSW went to college at University of Portland, where he studied computer science, learned to snowboard, and socialized with other Hawaii transplants. He also graduated from Columbia’s School of International and Public Affairs with a master’s degree. “I’m interested in the deep intellectual rigor of [applying research] to hard problems in the real world that are making a difference in people’s lives,” he says. He contemplated a Ph.D. but wasn’t interested in participating in the churn of academic research. KSW has traveled the world and lived on multiple continents. Between college and graduate school, he taught English at a middle school in Namibia. A quarter-turn of the globe away, he lived in Nicaragua and Guatemala, studying Spanish and working for a social service agency to build their website. His drive to problem-solve took him to Nigeria, where he worked with the United Nations Development Program on the Millennium Villages project. Later, a job with an international nonprofit led to weeks-long stints in Liberia, Ghana, and Palestine’s occupied West Bank. While working for a microfinance organization in Washington D.C., KSW met Christine Strong, a former Stillwater High Pony who captained her high school’s Nordic Ski Team. The two married after dating for just 11 months. They moved to the Bay Area in 2015; KSW’s stepmother was dying of cancer and California provided an easier time zone for phone calls and flights home. By 2019, the Strong Washburns were raising two kids in a place where they couldn’t play outside. “The wildfires got really bad, like apocalyptic. You saw people walking around with masks. The skies were orange,” KSW says. Between the smoke, the water issues, and housing costs, California felt unlivable for the long term. KSW wasn’t eager to leave the ocean, redwoods, and nearby mountains. He had imagined teaching his kids to surf, but had to abandon that parenting dream. When the Strong Washburns dec