Western Lands and Peoples series resumes with lecture by Pulitzer Prize finalist
Hernan Diaz
From MSU News Service
Hernan Diaz, a finalist for the 2017 Pulitzer Prize in fiction for his novel In the Distance, will discuss fictions about the West that were written by foreigners as the Ivan Doig Center for the Study of the Lands and Peoples of the North American West’s Perspectives on the American West Lecture Series resumes on Monday, September 16th.
Diaz’s lecture, “The Fictional West,” is set for 6pm in the Hager Auditorium at the Museum of the Rockies in Bozeman and is free and open to the public. It will be preceded by a book signing and followed by reception, both in the museum lobby. Doors open at 5pm.
Diaz, associate director of the Hispanic Institute for Latin American and Iberian Cultures at Columbia University, will discuss a largely unknown literary tradition – texts about America written by authors who had little or no contact with this country. His lecture will be an exploration of the fictions of the West and, more generally, the fictions about America – and the place of foreigners in the framing of our national canon.
Diaz is the editor of the academic journal Revista Hispánica Moderna. He is a 2019 Whiting Award winner whose work has appeared in The New York Times, Granta, The Paris Review and elsewhere. In the Distance won the Saroyan International Prize, was a Publishers Weekly Top 10 Book of 2017, and was a finalist for the 2018 PEN/Faulkner Award and the Pulitzer Prize.
The Perspectives on the American West lecture series features experts from around the country discussing the history, literature and culture of the West; issues affecting the wildlife and fisheries of the region; and the West’s geography, geology and resources. The series is co-sponsored by the College of Letters and Science and the Burton K. Wheeler Center and is a program of the Ivan Doig Center for the Study of the Lands and Peoples of the North American West, an interdisciplinary research center within the College of Letters and Science that is focused on the places and peoples of the Western United States and Canada. •
