Come See Pulitzer Prize Storyteller Junot Diaz

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 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 received 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.

The event is sponsored by the Rider’s Educational Opportunity Program, and is generously supported by the University’s English Department, Latin American Student Organization, Black Student Union and Rider Organization of Caribbean Affiliated Students, as well as the New Jersey Education Opportunity Fund Commission on Higher Education. EOP is a state sponsored program that helps low-income New Jersey residents attend college.