Junot Diaz: All Our Gratitudes

Australian Broadcasting Corporation





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Partner:: Australian Broadcasting Corporation
Location:: Sydney Writer's Festival
Sydney, Australia
Event Date:: 05.25.08
Speakers:: Junot D�az,; Dr. Wendy Were
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Summary: The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao is a galvanic novel that is both a big picture window that opens out on the sorrows of Dominican history, and a small, intimate window that reveals one family's life and loves.

Time and New York Magazine selected Oscar Wao as the best novel of 2007 and it was awarded the National Book Critics Circle award for fiction in 2007. It recently won the Pulitzer prize for fiction - Sydney Writer's Festival

Bio

Junot D�az

Junot D�az was born in the Dominican Republic and moved to New Jersey when he was six. He is the author of a story collection, "Drown," and a novel, "The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao," which won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction in 2008. Parts of both books first appeared in The New Yorker. He has contributed stories to the magazine since 1995; his most recent, "The Pura Principle," ran in the March 22nd issue.

Dr. Wendy Were

Wendy Were took up her role as Director of Sydney Writers' Festival in August 2006. She came to SWF from the Institute of Advanced Studies, a crossdisiplinary research institute at the University of Western Australia, where she was Deputy Director. Before that, for three years she curated and managed 'Words and Ideas', the literature and talks program of the Perth International Arts Festival where she developed a reputation for her adventurous and rigorous programming. A passionate reader, she strongly believes that work across territories yields exciting ideas and has a keen interest in crossdisciplinary and multi-arts collaborations. Wendy has a PhD from the Department of English, Communication and Cultural Studies at UWA. Her thesis entitled "Reading the Wound" considered traumatic memory and the redemptive potential of art in the novels of Nobel laureate Toni Morrison and was awarded with Distinction. During her PhD candidature, she worked as a lecturer and tutor at UWA, teaching in the areas of contemporary narrative and theory, film, women's studies, cultural studies and professional writing.