He thanked me with a bottle of fine Dominican rum. At the time, neither film was on video, but I had taped both off a cable network. Junot had heard about but never seen Montez’s cult film Cobra Woman (1944) and Campos’ scene-stealing role as a Latino teen in Blackboard Jungle (1955). Over dinner, our conversation centered on two Dominican actors that had made it in Hollywood: Maria Montez and Rafael Campos. I was then book editor of the San Antonio Express-News. That evening Díaz read from a work in progress, Monstro – a sci-fi tale set in the Dominican Republic. He was a guest of its Creative Writing program headed by Tom Grimes and visiting his friend and fellow writer Dagoberto Gilb. I first met Junot Díaz ten years ago at what is now Texas State University in San Marcos. And last week, Díaz received the prestigious MacArthur Fellowship. The book’s launch in New York City drew a wraparound crowd of nearly 1000. This Is How You Lose Her is currently on the Timestop ten-fiction bestseller list. Earlier this year, he had three stories in The New Yorker – two that appear in his new collection and another perchance a chapter from a new work in progress. In the past two weeks, The New York Times featured Díaz in their Sunday A&E section, the cover of its Sunday Book Review, and last week in its magazine section replete with pages from his notebooks. This article originally appeared on the L.A.
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