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Junot Díaz pulls out of writers festival following sexual misconduct allegations
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Writer Junot Diaz attends the Jersey Boys: David Chase, Junot Diaz, And Sam Lipsyte Moderated By David Remnick during The New Yorker Festival 2014 on Oct. 10, 2014 in New York City. (AFP/Andrew Toth)
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ulitzer Prize-winning author Junot Díaz has pulled out of his remaining sessions at the 2018 Sydney Writers’ Festival in Australia amid allegations of inappropriate and aggressive behavior toward fellow writer Zinzi Clemmons and other women.
The festival’s organizer released a statement on Saturday, which mentions the Dominican American author’s own words in his recent New Yorker essay, “Eventually the past finds you”.
“As for so many in positions of power, the moment to reckon with the consequences of past behavior has arrived,” read the statement.
According to The Associated Press, Díaz faced confrontation during the festival’s Q&A session on Friday when Clemmons questioned the essay, in which he shared details of his sexual assault when he was just 8 years old, and asked “why he had put her in a vulnerable position when she was a student six years ago”.
“As a grad student, I invited Junot Díaz to speak at a workshop on issues of representation in literature. I was an unknown wide-eyed 26 yo, and he used it as an opportunity to corner and forcibly kiss me. I'm far from the only one he's done this 2, I refuse to be silent anymore,” Clemmons later tweeted on Friday.
Read also: Sexual misconduct claims: The fallout
As a grad student, I invited Junot Diaz to speak to a workshop on issues of representation in literature. I was an unknown wide-eyed 26 yo, and he used it as an opportunity to corner and forcibly kiss me. I'm far from the only one he's done this 2, I refuse to be silent anymore.
— zinziclemmons (@zinziclemmons) May 4, 2018
Other writers, namely Carmen Maria Machado and Monica Byrne, then shared similar experiences of being subjected to such behavior from Díaz.
During his tour for THIS IS HOW YOU LOSE HER, Junot Díaz did a Q&A at the grad program I'd just graduated from. When I made the mistake of asking him a question about his protagonist's unhealthy, pathological relationship with women, he went off for me for twenty minutes. https://t.co/7wuQOarBIJ
— Carmen Maria Machado (@carmenmmachado) May 4, 2018
When I met him he told me I had the face of the oppressor and needed to darken up to look like a real Latina. Then he pulled me into his lap and hit on me. I got away from him but I couldn't stop crying. (cont)
— Alisa (Li) Rivera (@lirivera) May 4, 2018
“Sydney Writers’ Festival is a platform for the sharing of powerful stories: urgent, necessary and sometimes difficult. Such conversations have never been more timely. We remain committed to ensuring they occur in a supportive and safe environment for our authors and audiences alike,” the organizer adds.
In a statement for the New York Times, the 2008 Pulitzer Prize winner for The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao said “he takes responsibility for his past” and “that is the reason I made the decision to tell the truth of my [childhood] rape and its damaging aftermath.
"This conversation is important and must continue,” he adds. (kes)
