Junot Díaz is a Card-Carrying Genius

We couldn’t be more thrilled with the news that Junot Díaz was awarded a 2012 “genius grant” from the MacArthur Foundation, to pursue whatever creative project he choses. We can’t wait to see what this storytelling impresario does next; For years Díaz has hinted at wanting to, trying to write a science-fiction epic…but for the moment, we’ll stick to rereading the incandescent stories in This Is How You Lose Her.

If you haven’t yet, do spare a moment for Díaz’s recent conversation with fellow writer Francisco Goldman about why he writes:

“I guess we all have our covenants with the world (or at least we should have). For people like my mother, it’s her religion. For other people, it’s their children or perhaps their families. For me storytelling is my sacred. About the only covenant I have. As reader and writer I believe in the infinite worldmaking power of stories. I’m with Leslie Marmon Silko when she says in Ceremony: ‘I will tell you something about stories, (he said). They aren’t just entertainment. Don’t be fooled. They are all we have, you see, all we have to fight off illness and death.’ If I have a faith, that’s it. Stories are all we have to fight off illness and death.”

The whole conversation can be found here.

Miwa Messer is the Director of the Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers program, which was established in 1990 to highlight works of exceptional literary quality that might otherwise be overlooked in a crowded book marketplace. Titles chosen for the program are handpicked by a select group of our booksellers four times a year. Click here for submission guidelines.