VCU news

By Brian McNeill

Acclaimed author Junot Díaz will give a public reading at Virginia Commonwealth University on Sept. 12.

Díaz will speak at 6 p.m. in the third floor lecture hall of James Branch Cabell Library. The reading will be followed by a Q&A, a book-signing and a reception. Admission is free and open to the public.

Díaz was born in the Dominican Republic and raised in New Jersey. He is the author of “Drown”; “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 the fiction editor at Boston Review and the Rudge and Nancy Allen Professor of Writing at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

The event is co-sponsored by the Humanities Research Center in the College of Humanities and Sciences, the Office of the President, the Office of the Dean for Humanities and Sciences and the Creative Writing Program of the Department of English.