"An Evening with Junot Díaz: Literature, Diaspora, and Immigration," The University of Kansas

Dominican-American writer Junot Díaz is the author of the genre-spanning, critically acclaimed "The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao" (2007) and short story collections "Drown" (1996) and "This Is How You Lose Her" (2012). Díaz emigrated from the Dominican Republic to New Jersey as a child, and this immigration experience serves as the thematic focus of most of his work. Critics describe his work as "electrifying," "distinct" and "vulgar, brave and poetic," and he has received the Pulitzer Prize, National Book Critics Circle Award and the MacArthur Genius Fellowship. Díaz is the Rudge and Nancy Allen Professor of Writing at MIT, and he is currently working on a novel of science fiction titled "Monstro."