Salon.com > Junot Diaz

Claire Messud to Publishers Weekly: “What kind of question is that?”

Wed, 01 May 2013 14:47:00 +0000

In Salon this week, Laura Miller raved that Claire Messud's new novel, "The Woman Upstairs," is "claustrophobically hypnotic" and "a ferocious portrait of creative and spiritual frustration."

The author's feeling some of that frustration as well, with reductive media questions about the likability of her main character -- a question that might not be posed to a male author in quite this way -- as this new interview with Publishers Weekly shows:

Amber Dermont: The Internet expands the way we read

Tue, 02 Apr 2013 21:41:00 +0000

Amber Dermont is the author of the bestselling novel "The Starboard Sea" and a new story collection, "Damage Control." Caitlin Macy, in the lead review of the New York Times Book Review's “Fresh Voices” issue, wrote that Dermont “seems able to throw down a convincing story set anywhere, spun from any premise … This is not, however, one of those books whose authors appear to be casting around, trying a bit of this and a bit of that in search of a collection. [Dermont] is a deft writer, bullish on her characters, assertive in her descriptions of these specific worlds.”

I spoke with the author, who teaches at Agnes Scott College in Georgia, about the differences between her short fiction and her novel, the technological paradigm shifts with short stories, and her abiding passion for comedian Nick Kroll.

How do these stories differ aesthetically from your novel?

Must-see morning clip: Junot Diaz on teaching undocumented immigrants

Tue, 26 Mar 2013 12:58:00 +0000

Junot Diaz, winner of the Pulitzer Prize and MacArthur grant for his writing, currently serves on the board of advisors at Freedom University in Georgia. The college is dedicated to teaching undocumented immigrants--an education that Diaz says is necessary as every undocumented immigrant is "a future American."

He frames the immigrant debate with what he calls the "Superman Question":"Superman comes, lands in America==he's one of these kids," he poses to Stephen Colbert. "He's illegal...and you've got to decide what we're going to do with Superman."

The Colbert Report
Get More: Colbert Report Full Episodes,Indecision Political Humor,Video Archive

Sorry, the short story boom is bogus

Thu, 21 Feb 2013 01:00:00 +0000

The short story, like the western, is periodically said to be on the brink of a comeback. The most recent example of this boosterism: an article by the New York Times' new(ish) publishing reporter, Leslie Kaufman, titled "Good Fit for Today’s Little Screens: Short Stories," in which "a proliferation of digital options" is said to offer short fiction "not only new creative opportunities but exposure and revenue as well."

This would be good news — if there were any reason at all to think it was true. Kaufman's only evidence for this imaginary renaissance is the success of George Saunders' story collection, "The Tenth of December," published earlier this year and currently hovering in the middle ranks of several prominent best-seller lists. Saunders' longtime fans (I count myself among them) have reason to celebrate this, but it really has nothing to do with "digital options." Saunders has built a devoted following over the past 17 years, hadn't published a book in a good while and -- most important of all -- was heralded in the headline of a long, radiant profile in the New York Times Magazine as producing "the best book you'll read this year." All of that could have happened 10, 20 or 30 years ago and produced the same result.

Robert Caro, Katherine Boo nominated for National Book Critics Circle prize

Mon, 14 Jan 2013 15:17:00 +0000

NEW YORK (AP) -- Robert Caro, Katherine Boo and the late Anthony Shadid are among the finalists for the National Book Critics Circle prize.

Boo already won the National Book Award for her nonfiction account of a Mumbai community, "Beyond the Beautiful Forevers," while Caro was a finalist for his latest Lyndon Johnson book, "The Passage of Power," and Shadid for his memoir "House of Stone." Zadie Smith's "NW" and National Book Award contender Ben Fountain's "Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk" were fiction nominees.

Thirty authors in six competitive categories were announced Monday, with stories set everywhere from Texas to London to North Korea. Some of last year's critical favorites were bypassed, including Junot Diaz's "This Is How You Lose Her" and David Nasaw's "The Patriarch."

Others in the running for fiction include French author Laurent Binet's "HHhH," Adam Johnson's "The Orphan Master's Son" and Lydia Millet's "Magnificence." Boo is a nominee for general nonfiction, along with Andrew Solomon's bestselling "Far from the Tree," Steve Coll's "Private Empire," Jim Holt's "Why Does the World Exist?" and David Quammen's "Spillover."

Salon’s ultimate book guide

Mon, 24 Dec 2012 15:00:00 +0000

Need a last-minute gift? Or sitting on a gift card and need a great book to read over the holiday break?

You could check out our What To Read Awards for the top-10 books by our Laura Miller as well as our favorite critics. Or, you could get some recommendations straight from the authors of some of our best books of 2012.

As part of a long-standing Salon tradition, we asked the authors of the books that we loved most this year to tell us about a 2012 book they read and loved. Junot Diaz, Gillian Flynn, Lauren Groff, Andrew Solomon, Tana French, Victor LaValle, Jess Walter, Maggie Shipstead and more contribute their picks below. Take the whole story shopping.

David Abrams, author of “Fobbit” (Grove Press, Black Cat)
“Breed,” by Chase Novak (Mulholland Books)

Junot Díaz, feminist

Thu, 22 Nov 2012 16:00:00 +0000

A lot has been written on Junot Díaz lately. For several weeks starting in September, he appeared in at least twelve publications that showed up at my house. He was in everything from the unsolicited Time Magazine, apparently intended for my fifteen-year-old son, to Vogue, where Díaz appeared in costume, dressed as a member of Edith Wharton’s circle. Díaz’s face smiled out from Entertainment Weekly, and he appealed for understanding from the pages of the New York Times Magazine. Online, the Guardian Blog stated that the term “genius” was inadequate praise. Seemingly everywhere, his big glasses, smooth head, trim beard, and tentative smile greeted me. If Andy Warhol still lived, he would use Junot Diaz as a subject.

Junot Díaz, Dave Eggers among National Book Award finalists

Wed, 10 Oct 2012 17:20:00 +0000

It's been a great year for Junot Díaz: The Pulitzer Prize-winning author recently won a coveted MacArthur genius grant, and his latest book, "This Is How You Lose Her," is a bestseller. Now "Lose Her" has landed him on the finalist list for the National Book Award. Díaz is joined by veteran writer and McSweeney's founder Dave Eggers ("A Hologram for the King"), Pulitzer Prize finalist Louise Erdrich ("The Round House"), Ben Fountain ("Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk") and newcomer Kevin Powers ("The Yellow Birds").

Nonfiction finalists include New Yorker staff writer Katherine Boo's journey in an Indian slum (“Behind the Beautiful Forevers: Life, Death and Hope in a Mumbai Undercity"), tireless biographer and journalist Robert A. Caro, for his fourth book on Lyndon B. Johnson (“The Passage of Power: The Years of Lyndon Johnson") and a posthumous nomination for New York Times foreign correspondent Anthony Shadid (“House of Stone: A Memoir of Home, Family and a Lost Middle East"), who died earlier this year while on assignment in Syria.

Junot Díaz: My stories come from trauma

Wed, 10 Oct 2012 15:36:00 +0000

JUNOT DIAZ’S LITERARY STAR keeps rising. In the past two weeks, The New York Times featured Díaz in their Sunday A&E section, the cover of its Sunday Book Review, and last week in its magazine section replete with pages from his notebooks. Earlier this year, he had three stories in The New Yorker – two that appear in his new collection and another perchance a chapter from a new work in progress. This Is How You Lose Her is currently on the Timestop ten-fiction bestseller list. The book’s launch in New York City drew a wraparound crowd of nearly 1000. And last week, Díaz received the prestigious MacArthur Fellowship.

I first met Junot Díaz ten years ago at what is now Texas State University in San Marcos. He was a guest of its Creative Writing program headed by Tom Grimes and visiting his friend and fellow writer Dagoberto Gilb. I was then book editor of the San Antonio Express-News. That evening Díaz read from a work in progress, Monstro – a sci-fi tale set in the Dominican Republic. Over dinner, our conversation centered on two Dominican actors that had made it in Hollywood: Maria Montez and Rafael Campos. Junot had heard about but never seen Montez’s cult film Cobra Woman (1944) and Campos’ scene-stealing role as a Latino teen in Blackboard Jungle (1955). At the time, neither film was on video, but I had taped both off a cable network. I later sent Díaz VHS copies. He thanked me with a bottle of fine Dominican rum.

Junot Díaz is a genius

Tue, 02 Oct 2012 10:37:00 +0000

Some guys have all the luck. And some guys totally deserve it. Junot Díaz, the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of "The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao" and "This Is How You Lose Her," has joined literary heavyweights like Thomas Pynchon and David Foster Wallace in winning the MacArthur Foundation's Genius Grant, also known as the MacArthur Fellowship.

The MacArthur Foundation famously distributes grants to its anointed geniuses without conditions. This year's typically eclectic class includes a mandolinist, a pediatric neurosurgeon and a geochemist. (Yeah, that's a thing.) See the whole list here.

A cheater’s guide to everything

Mon, 10 Sep 2012 19:49:00 +0000

If you don’t know who Junot Díaz is, you should. His writing stands out as startlingly original in a world that often feels crammed with literary replication. He is the author of "Drown"; he won the Pulitzer Prize for "The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao"; and he is the author of the newly released "This Is How You Lose Her," a story collection that centers around the charming and irresistible Yunior whose flaws only make us love him more.

“This Is How You Lose Her”: A cheater in love

Sun, 09 Sep 2012 22:00:00 +0000

"You really should write the cheater's guide to love," a friend says to Yunior, the primary character running through the stories in Junot Díaz's new collection, "This Is How You Lose Her." Yunior doesn't, but Díaz has. "This Is How You Lose Her" traces Yunior's very rocky path to the understanding that women are people whose dignity and feelings matter as much as his own -- as opposed to interchangeable cogs in the supply line of sex.

Yunior, who figured prominently in Díaz's celebrated debut collection, "Drown," isn't as endearing as the title character in "The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao," his Pulitzer-winning 2007 novel -- but then, who is? Yunior is a reluctant adult, prone to selfishness and preoccupation with his own sufferings, like many people in their 20s trying to sort out how to live. Much of his romantic blundering stems from the male examples surrounding him in his youth: a father who made the kid wait in the car while he went on "pussy runs" and a handsome older brother, Rafa, who went through girls the way most teenage boys go through kleenex. One of Yunior's girlfriends reports that her friends blame his infidelity on his background: "I cheated because I'm Dominican and all us Dominican men are dogs and can't be trusted."