With Junot Díaz at Swarthmore

[frostokovich]

I had the rare pleasure this week of listening to and meeting Pulitzer Prize-winning author Junot Díaz at Swarthmore College. He read an appropriately brief excerpt from The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, and then fielded questions about writing, to which he gave answers so good that I am appropriating them for future writing classes.  He's a

Comments

[scottedelman]

What a wonderful moment!

Moment

[frostokovich]

It was, truly. There was a kind of "walking on air" feeling afterwards. And quite honestly I'm not sure it's abated.

g

[dreamsbay]

Yep, Junot is an amazing guy all-around - I got to hang out with him a bit while I was a student and before he won the Pulitzer. His time's a little harder to come by now, of course, but he's still one of the greatest, most wonderfully literary and geeky guys I've ever had the pleasure of knowing. That's fantastic that he was into your stuff!

If you're ever up in Boston, consider yourself invited to come hang out with us in the Comparative Media Studies program. We have conversations like this all the time. :)

[frostokovich]

Man, I'd love to. That would be grand--and I'll take you up on it. Chris Castellani, who is one of the Grubb Street workshop folks in Boston, taught at Swarthmore last year, and he's another truly fine individual, and another reason I'd like to spend some time up your way.

I meant to ask Junot, too, if he hung out at all with Joe Haldeman, my old old friend, who teaches at MIT one semester a year. I can't imagine they haven't run into each other.

Thanks again,
greg

[dreamsbay]

Sounds like a plan! Once you get a handle on when you'd like to come up, ping me at glong [at] mit [dot] edu and I'll see what I can set up for you. You may want to check out our Events calendar at http://cms.mit.edu/events to see when would be the best time to visit - we bring in really fantastic lecturers once a week to talk to our students about all kinds of media-related things. For example, our Futures of Entertainment 3 conference is this weekend, which will bring in a whole mess of fascinating characters including the production designer for the upcoming WATCHMEN movie. Oh, and I believe we have J. Michael Straczynski lined up to come out and give a lecture in the spring of next year...

[ogre_san]

Wow. You just never know.

[hefngafr]

I'm sorry I missed that reading, but wow, I'm glad you made it!

Re: "Then the elf said..."

[frostokovich]

It got even more entertaining when I ran into Joe Haldeman at the Mill 'n' Swill last Monday. As I suspected, he and Junot are not only acquainted, but pals. So I hope to get up to MIT next fall if nothing else and hang out a weekend with the two J's.
Diaz and Delany were co-reading in NYC last Monday at the same time. We hoped they would make it to the SFWA affair, but alas they were having fun elsewhere. And on that rhyme I'll sit down.

gf