Title: Junot Diaz
When: Wed, Sept 08 2008 | 8:00
Where
: Rutgers Student Center - New Brunswick
Category
: Writers at Rutgers Reading Series

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Driving Directions

Admission: Free and open to the Rutgers community and the general public
The reading will be followed by a reception and book signing

Reading

“Rutgers, honestly, it was like a wonderland for me, like going from the black and white of Kansas to the Technicolor of Oz. I had never been around the density of so many smart, beautiful people.”

– Junot DÍaz, Rutgers University alumnus, in the New York Times, November 25, 2007. DÍaz’s The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao was named the #1 novel of 2007 by Time magazine. Significant parts of the novel are set at Rutgers–New Brunswick.

Publications
briefwondrous_pulitzer drown_junotdiaz
Biography

Junot Díaz was born in the Dominican Republic and immigrated to New Jersey as a young boy. The juxtaposition of these two cultures is a common theme in his writing, and appears in his short story collection, Drown (1996), and his novel, The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao (2007). His novel tells the story of a teenage Dominican named Oscar Wao—a Spanish pronunciation of Oscar Wilde—who buries his broken heart and frustration in sci-fi novels and Star Trek action figures. The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao won the 2008 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and the 2007 National Book Critics Award for Best Novel. The novel was named the Best Novel of the Year byTime magazine and New York magazine, and selected as one of the best books of 2007 by the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, the San Francisco Chronicle, the Washington Post, Entertainment Weekly, and People magazine. His short fiction has appeared in The New Yorker, Story, The Paris Review, and various anthologies. Díaz has received a fellowship from the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation and the Rome Prize from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. Díaz is the fiction editor for the Boston Review and teaches creative writing at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He earned his BA in English from Rutgers University in 1992.

Websites

Junot Díaz's Website
New York Times Review of The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao
New York Magazine
Review of The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao
Authors@Google Reading with Junot Díaz
Powell’s Author Interview with Junot Díaz
Bookslut Interview with Junot Díaz

Sponsors

Department of English
Office of the Vice President for Undergraduate Education
Office of the Executive Vice President for Academic Affairs
Office of the Associate Vice President for Academic and Public Partnerships
Friends of Rutgers English
Plangere Writing Center
Writers House
Rutgers Federal Credit Union