Abstract:
In this talk for students and faculty, Hernan Diaz reflects on the making of his fiction, including his Pulitzer Prize–winning novel Trust, and the formal experiments that shape his exploration of power, finance, and narrative authority. He discusses how his work interrogates the myths of capitalism and the construction of historical truth, moving between intimate psychological portraits and vast economic systems. Situating these concerns within a global frame, Diaz considers how stories about money, speculation, and ambition resonate far beyond Wall Street, finding echoes in port cities and financial hubs around the world. Turning to Macao and China’s Greater Bay Area, he reflects on the region as a dynamic crossroads of trade, risk, and reinvention, where local histories intersect with planetary flows of capital and culture. Addressing university students and faculty, Diaz invites conversation about archives, translation, and the ethics of representation, proposing literature as a vital space for reimagining our interconnected world.

Biography:

Diaz has a BA in Literature from the University of Buenos Aires; an MA from King’s College, University of London; and a PhD from New York University. He has written for a very wide number of publications, including The Paris Review, Granta, The Yale Review and is the author of three novels, of which Trust, published in 2022, was awarded the 2023 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. He has also written works of non-fiction and collections of short stories. He has won numerous awards, including: First Novelist Award (2018), New American Voices Award (2018), Prix Page America Award (2018) and William Saroyan International Prize for Writing for Fiction (2018). He was also a finalist for PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction  (2018) and Pulitzer Prize for Fiction (2018). His 2022 novel, Trust, received the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction (2023), Kirkus Prize (2022) and Booker Prize longlist (2022). He was a Guggenheim Fellow in 2022 and was given the Whiting Award in 2019.