Pulitzer Prize-Winning Author Junot Diaz To Speak At Duke

Pulitzer Prize-Winning Author Junot Diaz To Speak At Duke

Credit: Provided

Caption

Junot Diaz, the 2008 Pulitzer Prize-winning author of "The Brief and Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao," will read and discuss his latest work at Duke University on Wednesday, Feb. 18.

The event, "Notes from the New America: A Reading," will take place at 6 p.m. in the Richard White Lecture Hall on Duke's East Campus. The reading will be followed by a reception and book signing. The event is free and open to the public, although seating and parking are limited.

The reading is sponsored by Lambda Upsilon Lambda Fraternity and the Program in Latino/a Studies in the Global South.

Díaz spent 11 years writing the tale of Oscar Wao -- a Spanish pronunciation of Oscar Wilde -- a Dominican teenager who buries his broken heart and frustration in sci-fi novels and Star Trek action figures. The teen, like Diaz, balances two cultures -- one in New Jersey, another in his family's native Dominican Republic. The novel, widely praised for its realism and immediacy of style, mixes pop culture, political criticism and characters with visceral street credibility.

Díaz also authored "Drown," a collection of short stories. He is a professor in MIT's School of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences.

In addition to the Pulitzer Prize, Diaz also has received the John Sargent Sr. First Novel Prize, the National Book Critics Circle Award, the Anisfield-Wolf Book Award and the Dayton Literary Peace Prize. His fiction has appeared in The New Yorker, African Voices, Best American Short Stories (1996, 1997, 1999, 2000), in Pushcart Prize XXII and in The O'Henry Prize Stories 2009.

For additional information, visit www.latino.aas.duke.edu.