Pulitzer Prize-winning Novelist Junot Diaz Visits Campus

Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist Junot Diaz will read from his work at 7 p.m. Monday, Feb. 13, 2016, in Joe Rosenfield '25 Center, Room 101. Diaz also will lead a roundtable discussion about writing fiction at 4 p.m. in Rosenfield Center Room 209. Both events are free and open to the public.

Diaz is fiction editor of the Boston Review and the Rudge and Nancy Allen Professor of Writing at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Diaz's work, which often focuses on immigration and feelings of displacement, is particularly salient amidst current debates around immigration. Former President Obama said in an interview with The New York Times that his work speaks "to a very particular contemporary immigration experience," with stories of people who are "steeped with this sense of being an outsider, longing to get in, not sure what you're giving up." 

Born in the Dominican Republic and raised in New Jersey, Diaz writes prolific stories of the Caribbean diaspora, American assimilation, and negotiation of identity. His novel, The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, tells the story of three generations of a family living in the Dominican Republic and the United States. It won the 2008 Pulitzer Prize in Fiction and the National Book Critics Circle Award.

Diaz also is the author of critically acclaimed Drown and most recently, the short story collection This Is How You Lose Her, a New York Times bestseller and National Book Award finalist. In 2012, he was awarded the prestigious MacArthur “Genius" Fellowship. He has received the Dayton Literary Peace Prize and a Guggenheim Fellowship, among others.

Sponsoring this event are the Student Organization of Latinxs; the Rosenfield Program in Public Affairs, International Relations, and Human Rights; the Office of Diversity and Inclusion; Intercultural Student Affairs; Writers@Grinnell; Student Activities; and the Student Government Association.

Grinnell College welcomes the participation of people with disabilities. Rooms 101 and 209 are equipped with induction hearing loop systems, which enables individuals with hearing aids set to T-Coil to hear the program. Accommodation requests may be made to Conference Operations.

The College welcomes the presence of minors at all age-appropriate public events and for informal visits, with the understanding that a parent, legal guardian, or other responsible adult assumes full responsibility for their child’s safety and behavior during such visits or events. In these cases the College expects that an adult responsible for the visiting child takes measures to ensure the child’s safety and sees that the child complies with directions of college personnel. Grinnell College is not responsible for supervision of minors on campus.