Even before he learned how to write, Hernán Díaz knew words were his thing.
“I always knew I wanted to be a writer. I grew up in a rather bookish home, which helped. But as a child, I never wanted to become an astronaut or a firefighter. An unexplainable love of language, which has been with me forever, was my motivation,” says the Pulitzer Prize-winning and bestselling author of the novels Trust and In the Distance, and the nonfiction Borges, Between History and Eternity.
A longtime professor and academic journal editor, Díaz is this year’s recipient of the Peggy V. Helmerich Distinguished Author Award, given by the Tulsa City-County Library and Tulsa Library Trust.
“It defies belief to find one’s name in a list including so many heroes, from Toni Morrison to Kazuo Ishiguro, from Ian McEwan to Hilary Mantel. Just imagine a list from which one could produce such names at random,” says Díaz. “It is also quite special to be honored by the Tulsa City-County Library. I’ve always worked at libraries, and I still do. I have an unpayable debt of gratitude to the librarians and curators that have helped me through the years, and their service to their communities should always be remembered and praised.”
Over the past decade, Díaz has received numerous accolades, including the 2023 John Updike Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, given to “a writer whose contributions to American Literature have demonstrated consistent excellence.” His first novel, In the Distance, was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize and the PEN/Faulkner Award. His second novel, Trust, received the Pulitzer Prize for fiction and was longlisted for the Booker Prize, among other nominations.
Highly acclaimed for his narrative ingenuity, intellectual depth and elegant prose, the linguaphile Díaz says he “can’t imagine writing without feeling the joy of inhabiting language, without the thrill of discovering a felicitous syntactical surprise, without the gratitude for having found the right word, without the hope of sharing these pleasures with the reader.”
Born in 1973 in Argentina, the multilingual Díaz moved with his family to Sweden when he was 2, returned to Argentina around age 9, moved to London in his early 20s and then to the U.S. in 1999, where he has lived in New York for over two decades.
“Although I’ve traveled extensively throughout the United States, I have never been to Oklahoma,” he shares. “I’m glad this grave situation will be rectified soon. I’ve always associated Oklahoma with the last pages of Amerika, Kafka’s unfinished first novel. We leave Karl Rossman, the protagonist, on a train headed for the ‘Nature Theater of Oklahoma.’ Thus, since my teenage years, the resounding name of your state has been filled with promise.”
2025 Peggy V. Helmerich Distinguished Author Award Featuring Hernán Díaz
Free Public Presentation and Book Signing
Dec. 4 ● 5:30 p.m.
Author Presentation and Black-Tie Gala
Dec. 5 ● 6 p.m.
Central Library
Fifth Street and Denver Ave.
Visit tulsalibrary.org/helmerichaward for more details.
