Brooklyn BookBeat: Junot Díaz draws hundreds to BAM’s ‘Eat, Drink’ series
Despite his phenomenal literary achievements, Pulitzer Prize-winning author Junot Díaz was not always on the path to becoming a writer. “Most of the time, I thought it was going to be a night job,” he told a crowd on Wednesday evening at BAMcafé. The featured speaker at BAM’s most recent “Eat, Drink & Be Literary” event, Díaz trekked to Brooklyn – joking about how long it took him to get there from Manhattan – to deliver an animated and often uproarious reading from his latest book, “This is How You Lose Her.“
Wednesday’s event sold out months ago; Sandy Sawotka, BAM’s director of publicity, told Brooklyn Daily Eagle, “It was one of the first events [of the “Eat, Drink” series] to sell out.” The space at BAM was packed with a literary crowd of over 200 guests who enjoyed a pre-reading dinner buffet with wine, while serenaded by two cellists. In partnership with the National Book Awards, BAM’s literary series has hosted an exciting roster of participants in 2013, including Martin Amis and Jamaica Kincaid. Brooklyn-based writers Colson Whitehead and Nell Freudenberger have also been featured this year.
BAM’s president, Karen Brooks Hopkins, introduced Wednesday’s event, and Deborah Treisman, fiction editor of The New Yorker, moderated the discussion with the author.