Kicking off VCU’s 2017-2018 Visiting Writers Series, profound author Junot Díaz will be traveling to the university tonight to give a free public reading, followed by a Q&A, book signing, and reception. The Visiting Writers Series is run by the Department of English’s MFA Program in Creative Writing, which annually asks writers to come give public readings of their work. Díaz’s reading is co-sponsored by the Humanities Research Center in VCU’s College of Humanities and Sciences.
Díaz was born in the Dominican Republic and raised in New Jersey and known for writing the critically acclaimed Drown, and The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, which won the 2008 Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Critics Circle Award; and This Is How You Lose Her, a New York Times bestseller and National Book Award finalist.
He is the recipient of a MacArthur “Genius” Fellowship, PEN/Malamud Award, Dayton Literary Peace Prize, Guggenheim Fellowship, and PEN/O. Henry Award. A graduate of Rutgers College, Díaz is currently the fiction editor at Boston Review and the Rudge and Nancy Allen Professor of Writing at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Past VCU Visiting Writers include names like Stephen Dunn, Yusef Komunyaaka, and Dinty Moore. You can see the schedule for VCU’s entire Visiting Writers series here.
Junot Díaz’s reading will be held at the Cabell Library Lecture Hall at 901 Park Ave. Tues. Sept. 12 (tonight) st 6 pm.
