READING/INTERVIEW: Michael Chabon & Junot Díaz

Siri Agrell is the author of Bad Bridesmaid: Bachelorette Brawls and Taffeta Tantrums, which was published in 2007.

Michael Chabon is the bestselling and Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Mysteries of Pittsburgh, Wonder Boys, The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay and The Yiddish Policemen’s Union, among many other books. He lives in Berkeley, California, with his wife, the novelist Ayelet Waldman, and their children. His most recent novel, Telegraph Avenue, explores American racial and class politics through the story of two friends who own an independent Berkeley record shop threatened by a megastore.

Junot Díaz’s first novel, The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, won the National Book Critics Circle Award and the Pulitzer Prize. Díaz is the recipient of a PEN/Malamud Award and the Dayton Literary Peace Prize. Born in the Dominican Republic, he is a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. The short stories in Díaz’s new collection, This is How You Lose Her, lay bare the infinite longing and inevitable weaknesses of our all-too-human hearts.