Junot Díaz

Our scheduled event with Junot Díaz this Monday will no longer take place after the cancellation of the rest of his tour. We always take seriously our responsibility to ensure that our platform and our spaces are safe for our guests and audiences alike. The Wheeler Centre is inspired by the bravery of those sharing their stories and is committed to an accountable and responsive literary community for everyone.

‘Just because you don’t remember a place doesn’t mean it’s not in you.’

Junot Díaz was born in the Dominican Republic and grew up in New Jersey. His brilliant short-story collections (Drown and This Is How You Lose Her) and his Pulitzer Prize-winning novel (The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao) centre on the lives of young Dominican-Americans. With tremendous charm, pathos and irony, Díaz’s fiction explores questions of diasporic identity, exclusion and belonging.

Díaz has returned to these same themes with his latest venture, but this time he’s bringing his insight and imagination to a totally new audience: children. Islandborn is Díaz’s first foray into kids’ books and it’s a story about creativity, connection and the meaning of home.

Díaz is a storyteller of extraordinary humour and heart. Hosted by Maxine Beneba Clarke, he’ll discuss how he reads, writes and remembers at the Athenaeum Theatre in May.