Hernan Diaz in Conversation

The Esther Freier Lectures in Literature Series presents Hernan Diaz, author of the novels In the Distance, a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize and the PEN/Faulkner Award, and Trust, which won the 2022 Pulitzer Prize for fiction. 

This in-person event is free and open to the public with registration, which will be opened in August. Live captioning and ASL provided. For further questions about accessibility services and the venue, please email sutt0063@umn.edu or call 612-626-1528. Presented by the Department of English.

Diaz is the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of two novels translated into 34 languages. He is the recipient of the John Updike award from the American Academy of Arts & Letters, given to “a writer whose contributions to American literature have demonstrated consistent excellence.” His first novel, In the Distance, was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize and the PEN/Faulkner Award, and it was the winner of the Saroyan International Prize, the Cabell Award, the Prix Page America, and the New American Voices Award, among other distinctions. Trust, his second novel, received the Pulitzer Prize for fiction and was a New York Times bestseller, the winner of the Kirkus Prize, and longlisted for the Booker Prize, among other nominations. It was listed as a best book of the year by over 30 publications and named one of the 10 Best Books of the Year by the New York Times, Washington Post, NPR, and Time magazine; it was one of the New Yorker’s 12 Essential Reads of the Year. Trust is currently being developed as a limited series for HBO.

Diaz’s stories and essays have appeared in the Paris Review, Atlantic, Yale Review, Harper’s, Granta, McSweeney’s, and elsewhere. He has been awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Whiting Award, and fellowships from the New York Public Library’s Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers and the Rockefeller Foundation Bellagio Center. Diaz holds a PhD from NYU, edits an academic journal at Columbia University, and is also the author of Borges, between History and Eternity.