Syracuse University celebrates Latino Heritage Month with commemorative lecture by novelist Junot Diaz Sept. 24

Syracuse University celebrates Latino Heritage Month with commemorative lecture by novelist Junot Diaz Sept. 24September 22, 2008Carol K. Masiclatclkim@syr.edu

On Wednesday, Sept. 24, Syracuse University will host former SU professor and Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist Junot Diaz for the Latino Heritage Month commemorative lecture. The lecture will take place at 7 p.m. in the Joyce Hergenhan Auditorium in Newhouse 3. A book signing will follow.

Author of “The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao” (Riverhead Hardcover, 2007), Diaz is a Dominican-American writer whose work focuses on the duality of the immigrant experience.

Diaz’s short fiction has appeared in The New Yorker — which listed him as one of the top 20 writers of the 21st century — as well as in Story, The Paris Review and the anthologies The Best American Short Stories (1996, 1997, 1999 and 2000) and African Voices. His short story collection “Drown” (Riverhead Hardcover, 1996) and novel “The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao” have earned critical acclaim.

Accolades for “The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao” include the John Sargent Sr. First Novel Prize, the National Book Critics Circle Award, the Anisfield-Wolf Book Award, the Dayton Literary Peace Prize and the 2008 Pulitzer Prize.

He is currently the fiction editor at the Boston Review and the Nancy Allen Professor of Writing and Humanistic Studies at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Diaz’s lecture is free and open to the public. For more information, contact Josie Otero at (315) 443-9676.