Pulitzer Prize Winner Junot Díaz at Connecticut College Dec. 2
NEW LONDON, Conn. - Junot Díaz, author of the 2008 Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, "The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao," will host a reading and book signing at Connecticut College Dec. 2. "The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao" chronicles the life a comic-book-loving, overweight Dominican boy growing up in New Jersey under the curse of "fukú" - a curse believed to stem from the interactions of his family with the oppressive and bloody Dominican Republican dictator Rafael Trujillo.
Díaz, a fiction editor at the Boston Review and the Nancy Allen Professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), was born in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic, and immigrated to New Jersey with his family as a child. His fiction has appeared in The New Yorker, African Voice, Best American Short Stories and the O'Henry Prize Stories, among others. In addition to winning the 2008 Pulitzer Prize for fiction, "The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao" has earned the John Sargent Sr. First Novel Prize, the National Book Critics Circle Award, the Anisfield-Wolf Book Award and the Dayton Literary Peace Prize.
Díaz's reading is at 7:30 p.m. in the Ernst Common Room, Blaustein Humanities Center at Connecticut College, and will be followed by a book signing and reception. The event is free and open to the public. This event is co-sponsored by the Connecticut College Department of English, Center for Comparative Study of Race and Ethnicity, Department of Hispanic Studies, and the offices of the President, Dean of Faculty, Dean of College Community and Dean of Multicultural Affairs.
About Connecticut College
Situated on the coast of southern New England, Connecticut College is a highly selective private liberal arts college with 1900 students from all across the country and throughout the world. On the college's 750-acre arboretum campus overlooking Long Island Sound, students and faculty create a vibrant social, cultural and intellectual community enriched by diverse perspectives. The college, founded in 1911, is known for its unique combination of interdisciplinary studies, international programs, funded internships, student-faculty research and service learning.
For more information, visit www.conncoll.edu.
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November 16, 2009
