David Grann Speaks at the Salt Lake City Public Library
The bestselling author of The Wager, Killers of the Flower Moon, and the Lost City of Z spoke at the Main Library on Thursday, April 16, 2026.
David Grann is hunkered down on the floor of a small boat off the coast of Patagonia. The bestselling nonfiction author and journalist is a long way from his home in New York. The boat will see-saw wildly over the waves for the next 12 hours. He can’t read on these rough waters; he can’t even stand up. He pops in his earbuds and listens to the only audiobook he has downloaded: Moby Dick. He’s starting to have second thoughts about this journey.
“Look at me, I am clearly not an adventurer. I am not! I am a man made for a library,” he told the audience at the Salt Lake City Public Library on a chilly Thursday evening in April. He had just shown a short video clip of that choppy voyage, as members of the audience winced and shook their heads, grateful to be on solid ground.
“As the boat rolled further and further over, the sea swallowing the deck, I began to wonder what you’re probably wondering now: what was I doing in this gulf that was known as the Gulf of Pain?!”
He was following a story that began nearly three centuries ago. The result of this experiential research was The Wager: A Tale of Shipwreck, Mutiny, and Murder, his most recent #1 bestseller. He came across the story while looking through British libraries, finding journals, shiplogs, court proceedings, and other firsthand sources in the archives. “You gotta go to the boxes,” he said, referring to the serendipitous discoveries that come from poring over documents. If there’s a driving force behind his historical nonfiction, it’s the question: “Who gets to tell their story?” By pursuing the histories he finds hidden between the lines of dusty old documents, he uncovers forgotten truths and weaves them into mesmerizing and vital works like his acclaimed debut, The Lost City of Z.
Grann was in town courtesy of the Salt Lake City Library Foundation, the Library’s nascent fundraising arm. It was the first in an intended ongoing series of author talks that Library CEO Noah Baskett said demonstrates the Library’s “sustained commitment to bringing exceptional voices to Salt Lake City.” Grann’s hour-long presentation was exceptional indeed. Speaking with the breathless excitement of a friend telling you about his wild vacation, Grann took the audience with him as he described the background and research of Killers of the Flower Moon, The Wager, and an early story where he joined a much more relaxed version of Captain Ahab in a hunt for a giant squid in New Zealand.
So, what was he doing in the Gulf of Pain? He was looking for the truth. Ultimately, the story of The Wager is the story of the search for an ever-elusive truth. To really understand what happened to those shipwrecked sailors and be true in his accounting of them, he had to go to the island. Had to feel the frigid sea wind that they felt, walk the wild paths they walked, and scavenge for the meager food they had to live on. In a small stream he found floating timber, believed to be the last remnants of the Majesty’s ship, the Wager. Grann finished his talk with an elegant meditation on history and story and truth, and urged us to think of history as a living thing, shaped by those who tell it.
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Thanks to the Salt Lake City Library Foundation for bringing us this very special evening with David Grann. Members of the Foundation’s Literary Society were able to join Grann for an intimate reception before his talk. To join the Literary Society and enjoy perks like these throughout the year AND support the mission of the Salt Lake City Public Library, click here.
