Date: October 12, 2012, 7:30 PM
Location: Englert Theater

Junot Diaz was born and raised in Santo Domingo, the Dominican Republic. His work has appeared in: The New Yorker, The Paris Review, Time Out, Glimmer Train, Story, African Voices, Best American Fiction '96 (ed. John Edgar Wideman); Best American Fiction '99 (ed. Amy Tan); Best American Fiction '00 (ed. E.L. Doctorow) and The O. Henry Prize Stories anthology, 2009; Diaz was included in the 20 Writers for the 21st Century issue of The New Yorker (Jun '99). He received a Pushcart Prize XXII, for his story "Invierno," which was later also selected for the Pushcart Book of Short Stories, a compilation of the best fiction from the first 25 years of the Pushcart Prize.

Diaz edited The Beacon Best of 2001: Great Writing by Women and Men of All Colors and Cultures. He co-wrote the screenplay for Washington Heights directed by Alfredo de Villa. He is a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

His first novel The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao (September 2007, Riverhead) won he Pulitzer Prize and remained on the New York Times and independent bookstore bestseller lists for two years - in hardback and paperback. It has been sold in 33 languages where it hit bestseller lists around the world. Diaz's next story collection, This Is How You Lose Her will be published by Riverhead in September 2012.