On Thursday, February 13, Pulitzer Prize-winning author Hernan Diaz will join the Westport community in the Library’s Trefz Forum for the WestportREADS keynote conversation, alongside moderator Catherine Shen of Connecticut Public. The two will discuss Diaz’s debut novel, In the Distance, about a young Swedish immigrant who travels east from California in search of his brother, moving on foot against the great current of emigrants pushing west.
Diaz would be nominated for a Pulitzer Prize for In the Distance and claim the prize for his second novel, Trust, cementing his place among the great writers of his generation.
In advance of his talk at the Library, Diaz took the time to correspond with the Library about his trip to Westport, his literary successes, and why he will always treasure libraries and librarians.
Westport Library: What was your reaction to In the Distance being named our WestportREADS pick for 2025? And your thoughts on coming to The Westport Library to speak to our community?
Hernan Diaz: Libraries are my natural habitat, and I would be nothing without them. Absolutely everything that I’ve ever published has been written, partially, in libraries. And beyond their invaluable archival mission, libraries are also crucial nodes in any community. For all these reasons, it means the world to be able to meet Westport readers and be able to engage with them,
Writing can be a solitary endeavor. What does it mean to you to travel to discuss your books and connect with readers?
Writing was an utterly solitary endeavor for most of my life — I was published very late. This means I still find it utterly unbelievable to discover that my work exists in other people’s minds. I can’t even begin to convey how much I’ve learned about literature and even about my own writing from talking to readers around the world. It’s an outsized privilege.
How has your life changed since winning the Pulitzer Prize for Trust? And what impact has that had on your writing?
Well, as of last June, I’ve become a full-time writer, which has been my dream since I was a child. Needless to say, that has had a major impact on my writing and reading life.
There is an overwhelming amount of information out there, particularly in the modern digital world. Against that landscape, why do you think libraries still matter?
Libraries matter for so many reasons. I’ll offer up two of them: First, I am a great believer in the importance of the material dimension of the book. There is no substitute for having all those books there and (ideally) being able to walk around the stacks and engage in serendipitous associations. In this sense, libraries are thinking machines.
Second, librarians. What would we do without librarians, who are my personal heroes? Their erudition and passion and curatorial creativity are so vastly important.
What are your favorite or most influential books?
Oh, dear. This is a big question. Beckett, Kafka, George Eliot, Borges, Woolf, Dickens, Joy Williams, David Markson, Wodehouse… I could go on.
***
Note to patrons: Registration for the keynote conversation with Hernan Diaz is currently full, but there is a waitlist option and the event will be livestreamed on The Westport Library YouTube channel.
WestportREADS is funded by the estate of Jerry A. Tishman.
Among other storytelling mediums, books offer an extraordinary immersive experience, comparable to the joy of traveling to a new destination or engaging with a friend. Despite the solitude of reading, the act of getting lost in a good book is an enduring force of imagination that brings communities together to discuss, debate, and delight in its wonder.
In the Distance by Pulitzer Prize-winning author Hernan Díaz isn’t just a good book, it’s a great book — and even better than that, it is the WestportREADS 2025 book selection.
The Westport Library is thrilled to announce this year’s selection and even more excited to welcome Diaz to the Trefz Forum on Thursday, February 13, for a conversation about his first novel, the story of a poor Swedish immigrant’s transformation into a legendary outlaw in the American West.
Limited copies of the book are available for borrowing now, with the full allotment of volumes arriving Friday, December 13. In the Distance is also available as a digital copy (e-book).
Part book club, part reading challenge — and more than anything, a season of literary revelry brought to life by the Library’s dynamic happenings — WestportREADS is a special community experience that is entirely its own. Created in 2002, this landmark event serves as an occasion to bond over a great book and is designed to deepen our community’s engagement in literature throughout Westport and across Fairfield County.
Each winter brings a new WestportREADS book selection, with unique events and programs that connect readers to the story — and each other — in thematically captivating ways. Throughout January and February, get ready to head out west and experience an unconventional hero’s journey in the age of the Gold Rush with book discussions, crafts for all ages, and other immersive events centered around In the Distance.
A lecture led by U.S. historian Kris Klein Hernández kicks off the WestportREADS festivities on Thursday, January 16, followed by a film series screening First Cow (2019), The Gold Rush (1925), and Meek’s Cutoff (2010) on Fridays, January 17 and 24, and February 7, respectively.
Discussion groups are recurring throughout January and February, with a Book Pub at Walrus Alley on February 4 offering a chance to meet new people, form connections, and unite in our shared love of reading. Take this opportunity to not only read a great book, but to engage with your community as well.
In the Distance was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize and the PEN/Faulkner Award and the winner of the Saroyan International Prize, the Cabell Award, the Prix Page America, and the New American Voices Award, among other distinctions. It was also a Publishers Weekly Top 10 Book of the Year and one of Lit Hub’s 20 Best Novels of the Decade.
Much like his own journey growing up between Argentina and Sweden, and later settling down in New York, Díaz intended to subvert traditional stereotypes and story structures within the western genre.
Håkan Söderström, In the Distance’s protagonist, travels east in search of his brother, moving on foot against the great current of emigrants pushing west. Driven back again and again, he meets naturalists, criminals, religious fanatics, swindlers, Indians, and lawmen, and his exploits turn him into a legend. In the Distance defies the conventions of historical fiction and genre, offering a probing look at the stereotypes that populate our past and a portrait of radical foreignness.
Diaz told The Paris Review, "The experience of foreignness has determined my entire life. I wanted to recreate that feeling. In doing so, I tried to transcend the obvious fact that the protagonist is a foreigner. I tried to make genre and even language itself feel foreign. But at the same time, this is a very American story, which makes us remember that foreignness is part of the American experience to begin with ... I couldn’t think of a better way to say what I think about this country — which I love despite its enormous flaws — than through this book."
Past WestportREADS selections include The Art Thief by Michael Finkel, Firekeeper’s Daughter by Angeline Boulley, The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue by V.E. Schwab, Towards a More Perfect Union: Confronting Racism by Layla Saad, and Exit West by Moshin Hamid, among others.
For more past WestportREADS selections, and to learn more about the annual event, visit the WestportREADS homepage on The Westport Library website.
WestportREADS is supported through a generous bequest by the estate of Jerry A. Tishman.
If reading is a solitary act, the form of the book galvanizes us for communal discussion, debate, and celebration. Established in 2002, WestportREADS continues the storied tradition of reading a book together to strengthen community engagement in literature.
The 2024 WestportREADS selection is The Art Thief by Michael Finkel, the true-crime tale of the world’s most prolific art thief, Stéphane Breitwieser, who stole, never for money, but for personal treasure and adoration.
Select copies of the book are available for borrowing now at The Westport Library, with the full complement of WestportREADS volumes arriving in December. The Art Thief is also available as a digital copy (e-book) and as an audiobook.
A full slate of programming centered on The Art Thief begins in early January. The capstone event will be held Friday, January 26, when Finkel appears in-person at the Library to deliver the WestportREADS keynote address (registration coming soon).
“We are excited to convene around Michael Finkel’s The Art Thief in Westport’s annual celebration of literature,” said Westport Library Executive Director Bill Harmer. “Finkel is a writer who simultaneously pushes the boundaries of truth while searching for it. The Art Thief narrative gives us the twists and turns of any great true-crime story while raising existential questions on art, capital, and values.”
Finkel (True Story: Murder, Memoir, Mea Culpa; The Stranger in the Woods: The Extraordinary Story of the Last True Hermit) is a journalist and best-selling memoirist hailing from Northern Utah. After a prosperous run as a New York Times reporter, Finkel was terminated for compositing quotes in the 2001 story Is Youssouf Malé A Slave?
Shortly afterward, Finkel discovered that Oregon murderer Christian Longo used “Michael Finkel” as an alias. Finkel reached out to Longo, forging a relationship that served as the basis for True Story: Murder, Memoir, Mea Culpa. The book was adapted for film in 2015’s True Story, premiering at Sundance Film Festival, starring Jonah Hill, James Franco, and Felicity Jones.
Finkel’s follow-up, The Stranger in the Woods: The Extraordinary Story of the Last True Hermit, chronicled Christopher Knight, an intentional recluse who lived for 27 years in the woods of Maine with almost no human interaction, surviving by grifting life essentials. Vanity Fair contributing editor and ABC News special correspondent Stephen Junger raved that The Stranger in the Woods was "a story that takes the two primary human relationships — to nature and to one another — and deftly upends our assumptions about both.”
Finkel’s The Art Thief arrives with similar acclaim. Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter Kathryn Schulz wrote in The New Yorker, “The Art Thief, like its title character, has confidence, élan, and a great sense of timing. It is propelled by suspense and surprises. … This ultra-lucrative, odds-defying crime streak is wonderfully narrated by Finkel, in a tale whose trajectory is less rise and fall than crazy and crazier. ... Part of what makes Finkel’s book so much fun is that, without exception, [Breitwieser’s] strategies are insane.”
Finkel told Esquire, “Working on this book changed the way I experience museums and commune with a work of art. Breitwieser is often low energy; then, when he walks into a museum, it’s like he’s had a triple shot of espresso. This is someone who’s very parsimonious with his words, then suddenly he’s babbling like your favorite crazy art professor. I would watch his face as he stood in front of an artwork. If he didn't like something, it was a flat face. If he liked something, it was as if he’d been electrocuted, and he’d often look around the room to see if he could commune alone with it.“
Past WestportREADS selections include Firekeeper’s Daughter by Angeline Boulley, The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue by V.E. Schwab, Towards a More Perfect Union: Confronting Racism by Layla Saad, and Exit West by Moshin Hamid, among others.
For more past WestportREADS selections, and to learn more about the annual event, visit the WestportREADS homepage on The Westport Library website.
WestportREADS is supported through a generous bequest by the estate of Jerry A. Tishman.
***
Photo credit for Michael Finkel photo: Doug Loneman
The idea for Firekeeper’s Daughter percolated with Angeline Boulley for years, before she became a first-time novelist in her early 50s with its publication. It was worth the wait. Firekeeper’s Daughter was one of the best-reviewed books of 2021, earning raves from NPR, TIME, Entertainment Weekly, Good Morning America, and Publishers Weekly, among many others. In addition, it received the Printz Medal and the Morris Award, was named a Reese Witherspoon x Hello Sunshine Book Club YA Pick, and has been optioned for a Netflix show by Higher Ground, the production company of Barack and Michelle Obama.
One week from today, Boulley will join us in the Library’s Trefz Forum to discuss her debut novel, which is this year’s WestportREADS selection. Before her appearance, Boulley, whose second book, Warrior Girl Unearthed, comes out in May, took some time to answer our questions on coming to the Library, her favorite books, and more.
[Related: ‘Firekeeper’s Daughter' by Angeline Boulley Named 2023 WestportREADS Book Selection]
Westport Library: What was your reaction to Firekeeper’s Daughter being named our WestportREADS pick for 2023?
Angeline Boulley: I was absolutely thrilled to be named your 2023 WestportREADS book! Community reading programs are such a great way for people to come together and discuss different perspectives. I especially love intergenerational events that bring teens, parents, and grandparents together.
What are your general thoughts on coming to The Westport Library to speak to our community?
I am excited to visit The Westport Library. A library says a lot about a community — it's evident that Westport values artistic expression and views the Library as the heart of its community. Also, I'm curious about your Seed Library.
There is so much information out there now and so many things to do and places to visit. Against that landscape, why do you think libraries still matter?
Libraries bring people together and foster engagement as a community. It's a place where everyone can access resources and ideas, and [where they] are valued as community members rather than as customers or consumers.
What are your favorite or most influential books?
Fiction:
1. The Marrow Thieves by Cherie Dimaline
2. Marcelo in the Real World by Francisco X. Stork
3. The Round House by Louise Erdrich
4. The Last Time They Met by Anita Shreve
5. Chemistry by Weike Wang
6. The Fault in Our Stars by John Green
7. Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn
8. The Color Purple by Alice Walker
9. The Hazel Wood by Melissa Albert
10. The Red Tent by Anita Diamant
I'm also a huge fan of audiobooks. Here are my favorites (fiction):
1. Sadie by Courtney Summers
2. The Girls I've Been by Tess Sharpe
3. The Poet X by Elizabeth Acevedo
4. Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir
5. The Martian by Andy Weir
6. I Know This Much is True by Wally Lamb
7. The Girl on the Train by Paula Hawkins
8. The Poppy War by R.F. Kuang
9. Tara Road by Maeve Binchy
10. The Kitchen God's Wife by Amy Tan
And I listen to a lot of memoir/biography/autobiography/essays:
1. Heart Berries by Terese Marie Mailhot
2. What Remains by Carole Radziwill
3. Hunger by Roxane Gay
4. Diana: Her True Story by Andrew Morton
5. Me Talk Pretty One Day by David Sedaris
6. Let's Pretend This Never Happened by Jenny Lawson
7. Becoming by Michelle Obama
8. Stories I Only Tell My Friends by Rob Lowe
9. God Said, "Ha!" by Julia Sweeney
10. The Drummond Girls by Mardi Jo Link
What music/musicians/albums inspire you?
Faouzia
Florence + The Machine
Luther Vandross
Martina McBride
MisterWives
One Republic
Patty Loveless
Sister Hazel
Vienna Teng
Yaz
[Related: Westport Library WestportREADS 2023 Freegal Playlist]
