Pulitzer Prize–winning author Junot Díaz spoke with students not only as a creative writer, but also as a Dominican American immigrant and an activist. Hosted by Milton’s student Latino Association, Mr. Díaz answered questions from a packed room of students, on topics ranging from the writing process to the response to Ferguson, from gender equity to immigration. Mr. Díaz is the author of several books, including The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, for which he earned the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 2008. He is a creative writing professor at MIT and the fiction editor of Boston Review.
“When your teachers tell you to ‘write what you know,’ they are teaching you to scale things correctly. In other words, if you can’t draw a cup, it’s going to be hard to draw a battle station. Until you can accurately describe your own world, it’s probably going to be difficult for you to describe someone else’s.”