I just spotted this on Girl Detective (I told y’all she was awesome):

October 29: Junot Diaz, “We Are the New America: A Reading,” 7:30 pm
Diaz published his debut novel The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao eleven years after his acclaimed short story collection Drown and ended up winning the Pulitzer Prize, the Sargent First Novel Prize and the National Book Critics Circle Award for Best Novel of 2007. New York Times critic Michiko Kakutani characterized Diaz’s writing in the novel as: a sort of streetwise brand of Spanglish that even the most monolingual reader can easily inhale: lots of flash words and razzle-dazzle talk, lots of body language on the sentences, lots of David Foster Wallace-esque footnotes and asides. And he conjures with seemingly effortless aplomb the two worlds his characters inhabit: the Dominican Republic, the ghost-haunted motherland that shapes their nightmares and their dreams; and America (a.k.a. New Jersey), the land of freedom and hope and not-so-shiny possibilities that they’ve fled to as part of the great Dominican diaspora. Esther Freier Endowed Lecturer. Coffman Theater, 300 Washington Avenue SE, Mpls. 612-625-3363

On her site, she gives props to The Big Brain for giving her the heads up. I would like to give props to the Big Brain for giving her the heads up too. I *heart* Junot Diaz