Wayne Johnston is a novelist, born and raised in Goulds, Newfoundland. Before becoming a full-time writer, he worked as a reporter for St. John's Daily News. His fiction work has often focused on historical depictions of life in Newfoundland and Labrador.

Johnston's first book The Story of Bobby O'Malley, released in 1985, won the Books in Canada/W.H. Smith First Novel Award. His 1999 memoir Baltimore's Mansion received the RBC Taylor Prize. The Colony of Unrequited Dreams, published in 1998, was shortlisted for the Scotiabank Giller Prize and was a Canada Reads finalist in 2003, defended by Justin Trudeau. Johnston is also the author of novels The Divine Ryans and The Navigator of New York.