Come hear Pulitzer Prize-winning author Junot Diaz as he shares excerpts from his tale The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao during a public reading at 7 p.m. on Wednesday, November 19, in BLC Theater. The event is part of the University’s Educational Opportunity Program Distinguished Writer’s Series.

Diaz was awarded the 2008 Pulitzer Prize for his novel The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, which tells the story of Oscar, a Dominican teenager with a broken heart, who focuses his interests toward sci-fi novels and Star Trek, while growing up in New Jersey. Similarly, Diaz was born in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic, and moved to New Jersey at a young age.

Diaz also wrote the novel Drown. His work has appeared in The New Yorker, African Voices, Best American Short Stories, Pushcart Prize XXII and in The O. Henry Prize Stories 2009. Diaz received his undergraduate degree from Rutgers University and his M.F.A. from Cornell University. Currently, Diaz is the fiction editor at the Boston Review and a professor in the Writing and Humanistic Studies program at Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Rubin Joyner, director of Rider’s Educational Opportunity Program, said Diaz was selected to speak during the Distinguished Writer’s Series not only because he is a distinguished writer, but because he has a diverse background and can relate to young people.

This year’s event marks the EOP Distinguished Writers Series’ eighth year. Selected freshmen from the EOP program will share their critical analysis of Diaz’s work with their classmates on Wednesday. The students were selected for writing the best papers in English composition classes taught during the summer by English adjunct instructors Fredrick Lasser and Jane Rosenbaum.  Diaz will also be present to offer constructive criticism of their essays, answer questions and autograph books.