Esther Freier Lecture

We look forward to seeing you at our next free event at the University of Minnesota campus, as the author series that began in 2001 continues to explore literature and the humanities.

Fall 2024 Freier Lecture

An Evening with Hernan Diaz

Coffman Union Theater

Join the Department of English at 7:30 pm on Wednesday October 9, 2024, as the Esther Freier Lecture Series presents Diaz (above), 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 prior 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.

More author readings are offered through our creative writing program's Edelstein-Keller Visiting Writer Series.

About Esther Freier

The Esther Freier literature series hosts two free lectures each year featuring various prize-winning authors, from Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie to David Mitchell, Maggie Nelson to Joy Harjo.

The literary legacy that Esther Freier envisioned began in 2001, when celebrated novelist and essayist Jamaica Kincaid inaugurated the Esther Freier Endowed Lecture in Literature series. A clinical laboratory chemist and professor, Freier had a deep and profound love for literature and the humanities. She wanted to leave a legacy that would benefit the public and inspire emerging authors. In her will, Freier created an endowment that would bring prize-winning national and international authors to campus for free, public lectures and informal visits with students.

Esther Freier was born in Hibbing, Minnesota, in 1925. She moved to Minneapolis while still a child and spent her entire academic (BS ‘46, MS ‘56) and professional career of 45 years at the University of Minnesota. She co-authored the first paper dealing with quality control in clinical chemistry, winning several awards. When she retired in 1991, she held the only endowed professorship in medical technology in the nation. That year, Freier served as the first woman president of the Academy of Clinical and Laboratory Physicians and Scientists and was re-elected the following year.

Esther Freier was a teacher, friend, and mentor to many. The Department of English is deeply grateful for her generosity to us, the University, and the community.

Previous Freier Lecturers

April 24, 2024: Ross Gay & Aimee Nezhukumatathil
October 26, 2023: Jesmyn Ward
April 18, 2023: N. K. Jemisin
October 19, 2022: Joy Harjo & Layli Long Soldier
April 13, 2022: Jennifer Egan
March 24, 2021: Helen Oyeyemi
October 7, 2020: Alison Bechdel
October 23, 2019: Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
October 4, 2018: Frank Bidart & Maggie Nelson
April 4, 2018: Young People's Lit Panel with M. T. Anderson, Kate DiCamillo, David Barclay Moore, and Nicola Yoon
October 25, 2017: Edwidge Danticat
April 13, 2017: Andrew Solomon
October, 2016: Claudia Rankine & Marilynne Robinson
April, 2016: Abraham Verghese
October, 2015: Jeanette Winterson
February, 2015: Lynn Nottage
October, 2014: James McBride
April, 2014: David Mitchell
October, 2013: Katherine Boo
April, 2013: Colum McCann
October, 2012: Zadie Smith
April, 2012: Denis Johnson
October, 2011: Philip Gourevitch
April, 2011: Natasha Trethewey
October, 2010: James Salter
April, 2010: Richard Powers
September, 2009: Maxine Hong Kingston
March, 2009: Louise Glück
October, 2008: Junot Díaz
March, 2006: Suzan-Lori Parks
November, 2007: Paul Muldoon
April, 2007: E. L. Doctorow
November, 2006: Bharati Mukherjee
April, 2006: T. C. Boyle
October, 2005: Philip Levine
April, 2005: Anna Deavere Smith
November, 2004: Rita Dove
April, 2004: A. S. Byatt
October, 2003: Arnold Rampersad
February, 2003: Michael Chabon
November, 2002: Edmund White
March, 2002: Barry Lopez
March, 2001: W. S. Merwin
February, 2001: Jamaica Kincaid