I had a funny, awkward moment with Pulitzer Prize-winning author Junot Diaz when he came to speak at OSU on March 19.
Diaz appeared as
part of Ohio State’s President and Provost's Diversity Lecture
Series. As a Dominican-American who writes stories in which characters of all different races interact, he certainly fit the bill.
As a fellow writer, I
enjoyed hearing Diaz speaking about his writing process and reading passages from his
latest book, an engaging short-story collection titled This Is How You Lose
Her.
I was fortunate
enough to be able to do a phone interview with Diaz for the Call and Post
newspaper before he spoke at Ohio State. Since winning the Pulitzer Prize in 2008
for his debut novel, The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, Diaz has been
a very busy man and I was pleasantly surprised that he made himself available
for an interview.
When I emailed Diaz
through his website, I was amazed that he replied almost immediately and said
he could do the interview. He quite generously offered to do the interview upon
returning from a trip abroad to Japan and a full day of teaching English lit at
MIT in Boston, so we spoke at 11 o’clock one night. I was a bit groggy and had a
little trouble formulating my questions, but he answered each question
thoroughly and intelligently.
I went up and
introduced myself to Diaz when he got done speaking at the event at OSU's Student Union, but
because the line was so long, I didn’t get to converse with him.
The funny, awkward
moment happened like this: I noticed that Diaz and I were wearing the exact
same black peacoat and tried to joke about it by telling him, “Nice jacket.” He
was so distracted, signing books for the dozens of people waiting, that he
didn’t notice we were dressed alike and didn’t pick up on the joke. Oh, well…
Meeting a Pulitzer
Prize winner was an enjoyable experience nonetheless.
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