Kresge Library > Events at OU > *Junot Diaz- A Reading

Please join the Oakland University Department of English for a reading by Pulitzer Prize winning author, Junot Díaz. The reading will be November 4, 2010, from 5:00 to 7:00 PM in the Banquet Rooms in the Oakland Center (map--OC is #13). For more information contact Andrea Knutson (248-370-2960; knutson@oakland.edu). The reading is funded by the Departments of English, Writing and Rhetoric, and History; the Judd Family Endowment; and the College of Arts and Sciences Frontiers and Borders Program. For more information see the Department of English web site and the OU News story about the event .

Díaz is the Rudge and Nancy Allen Professor of Writing at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He received the Pulitzer Prize, the John Sargeant Sr. First Novel Prize, and the Dayton Literary Peace Prize for The Brief Wondrous Life Of Oscar Wao. In addition Díaz has won other major awards and fellowships including the Eugene McDermott Award, a Guggenheim fellowship, the PEN/Malamud Award, a fellowship at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University, and the Rome Prize from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. "Profoundly American in its representation of the immigrant experience, Junot Díaz’s corpus of work is a sustained examination of what it means to live between or within boundaries and to write at the frontier of experience and expression." [quoted from the Department of English web site] 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.

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Books by Diaz in Oakland University's Kresge Library.

 

Drown. New York: Riverhead Books, 1996. (location and availability in OU Library)

 

The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao. New York: Riverhead Books, 2007. (location and availability in OU Library)

 

Samples of Diaz's work available online:

"Alma." The New Yorker, (December 24, 2007).

"The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao [short story]." The New Yorker, (December 25, 2000).

"Homecoming, with Turtle." The New Yorker, (June 14, 2004).

Junot Díaz Reads from The Brief and Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao (National Public Radio) [audio]

*"Nilda [short story]. " Callaloo, 23.3 (Summer 2000), 885-891.

Interviews with Diaz:

"Pulitzer Prize Winner Junot Díaz on 'Oscar Wao.'" (from Latina.com)

"Origins: Chatting with Pulitzer Prize Winner Junot Díaz," by Gilbert Cruz, July 15, 2010. (Techland.com) [audio with video clips]

"Junot Díaz Discusses His 'Wondrous' Debut Novel." Interview with Terry Gross on NPR's Fresh Air, May 2, 2008. [transcript] [audio]

*"The Yale Literary Magazine Interviews Junot Díaz." Yale Literary Magazine, 20.1 (Spring 2008), 26-34.

Writings about his work:

*Hanna, Marcus. "'Reassembling the Fragments': Battling Historiographies, Caribbean Discourse, and Nerd Genres in Junot Díaz's The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao." Callaloo, 33.2 (Spring 2010), 498-520.

*Riofrio, John. "Situating Latin American Masculinity: Immigration, Empathy and Emasculation in Junot Díaz's Drown." Atenea, 28.1 (June 2008), 23- 36.

Other information about Diaz:

Díaz's personal web site

The New York Times: Articles about Junot Díaz

*Online access to asterisked items is freely available "on campus," but "off campus" access is limited to OU faculty, staff, and students.