Bookworks will host Pulitzer Prize-winning author Junot Díaz for a talk and signing of his award winning novel, 'The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao' at 7 p.m. Tuesday, Sept. 23 at Woodward Hall on the University of New Mexico Campus.
Photo: Pulitzer Prize-winning author Junot Díaz.
Díaz exploded onto the literary scene in 1996 with Drown, and the reverberations can still be felt. “Talent this big will always make noise,” wrote Newsweek, and so it has.
A collection of short stories that was one of the first books to illuminate the lives of Dominican-American immigrants, and “a front-line report on the ambivalent promise of the American Dream” (San Francisco Chronicle), Drown transformed Díaz into a literary star and now, Díaz has returned with his critically acclaimed, Pulitzer Prize-winning, first novel, The Brief and Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao (Riverhead Trade Paperbacks).
Spanning three generations and six decades, it chronicles the ill-fated quest for love by Oscar de León – literature’s first Ghetto Nerd – and the struggle of his family to escape the shape-shifting curse known as the fukú. Moving from the hardscrabble inner-city neighborhoods of New Jersey to the barrios of Santo Domingo, and from the fear-plagued Trujillo dictatorship to the multicultural campuses of the contemporary United States, Díaz both redefines the immigrant experience and transcends it.
Díaz is the winner of the 2008 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. His fiction has been published in The New Yorker and The Paris Review, and four times in The Best American Short Stories. His critically praised, bestselling debut book, Drown, led to his inclusion among Newsweek’s “New FDavid Brookshire of 1996” – the only writer in the group.
The New Yorker placed him on a list of the 20 top writers for the 21st century. Born in Santo Domingo, the Dominican Republic, and raised there and in New Jersey, Díaz graduated from Rutgers and received an MFA from Cornell. He lives in New York City and Boston, and is a tenured professor at MIT.
Tickets for the event went go on sale at Bookworks as of Aug. 14. A voucher for the $14 paperback of 'The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao,' to be released Sept. 2, may be purchased at Bookworks. This voucher is redeemable for the book and a ticket to the event. Customers will also have the option of purchasing a $5 ticket for the event only.
Tickets may be purchased in person, or over the phone. Bookworks is located at 4022 Rio Grande Blvd. NW, three miles north of Old Town, in the Flying Star Plaza, (505) 344-8139.