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.
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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.
What could be better than working on your favorite knitting or crocheting project while someone reads out loud to you?
Join our yarn circle/adult story time for your dose of productive relaxation! On Wednesday, January 8, we will be reading/listening to our WestportREADS 2025 choice, In the Distance by Hernan Diaz, before the author comes to speak on February 13.
In the Distance is the story of a young Swedish immigrant who, after becoming separated from his brother during their journey to America, embarks on a perilous trek across the 19th-century American landscape in search of him, facing numerous challenges and becoming an unwitting legend along the way.
The New York Times called this book: "Strange and transporting. … A weirdness to which a reader willingly submits, because of the vigorous beauty of [Diaz's] words. … In the Distance [is] an uncanny achievement: an original Western. … An affecting oddness is the great virtue of In the Distance, along with its wrenching evocations of its main character’s loneliness and grief. And its ability to create lustrous mindscapes from wide-open spaces, from voids that are never empty."
Bring your yarn projects to the Library on Wednesday afternoons from 1:30 to 3 pm in the Sheffer Gallery. We'll read aloud while you work on your project. Or you can just listen — no working necessary! No registration is required, and no yarn instruction provided.
Read Like a Librarian
New Books We're Excited About
Knitting and Crocheting
Kids and their families are invited to celebrate WestportREADS by joining us for a Western-themed craft event on Saturday, February 8.
Pioneers and gold-rushers often used small draw-string pouches to store their precious gold and belongings. Make your own pouch to store your change, phone, jewelry, or any other trinkets you'd like!
No registration required; just drop in! Adults must remain in the Library to assist their children.
The WestportREADS 2024 selection is In the Distance by Hernan Diaz. To learn more and see the WestportREADS 2024 children's selection, visit the WestportREADS page on our website.
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The Library is pleased to be able to offer free programs and events through the generous donations of patrons like you. Please consider giving to the Library so that we can continue to offer events like this one. Your donation is tax deductible. Donate Now!
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.
Room 210
Join PageTurner's for a discussion on the WestportREADS 2025 selection, In the Distance by Hernan Diaz.
Relive the perilous journey of the American West, reflect upon the ways in which Diaz subverts the Western genre, and connect with other members of your community through this compelling coming-of-age story.
Díaz 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."
For copies of the book, call 203-291-4807. New participants are always welcome!
Contact Carolyn Zygmont at czygmont@westportlibrary.org for more information.
About WestportREADS
Created in 2002, WestportREADS is a way for the Westport community to bond over a book and is designed to deepen our community’s engagement in literature.
Throughout January and February, there will be events and programs centered on In the Distance, book discussions, celebrations, and much more. It is a chance to not only read a great book but to engage with the community, meet new people, and celebrate our shared love of reading.
WestportREADS is funded by the estate of Jerry A. Tishman.
In the Distance Book Discussion Guide
WestportREADS 2025
PageTurners
READ Like a Librarian
NoveLlist Plus
Note to patrons: Due to a burst water pipe in the Library, the Pioneer Sewing Bee will be canceled for Saturday, January 25. Thank you for your understanding, and please come to our second scheduled Sewing Bee event on February 8.
Kids and their families are invited to celebrate WestportREADS by joining us for a Western-themed craft event on Saturdays, January 25 and February 8.
Pioneers and gold-rushers often used small draw-string pouches to store their precious gold and belongings. Make your own pouch to store your change, phone, jewelry, or any other trinkets you'd like!
No registration required; just drop in! Adults must remain in the Library to assist their children.
The WestportREADS 2024 selection is In the Distance by Hernan Diaz. To learn more and see the WestportREADS 2024 children's selection, visit the WestportREADS page on our website.
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The Library is pleased to be able to offer free programs and events through the generous donations of patrons like you. Please consider giving to the Library so that we can continue to offer events like this one. Your donation is tax deductible. Donate Now!
Join us at Walrus Alley for a community discussion of In the Distance, this year’s WestportREADS selection. Bring your appetite for conversation and delicious eats – the kitchen will be open! Registration is strongly suggested.
Join members of the community to discuss Hernan Diaz's book about a young Swedish boy who finds himself penniless and alone in California in the age of the Gold Rush. Relive the perilous journey of the American West, reflect upon the ways in which Diaz subverts the Western genre, and connect with other members of your community through this compelling coming-of-age story.
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."
For copies of the book, please call 203-291-4807. New participants are always welcome!
About WestportREADS
Created in 2002, WestportREADS is a way for the Westport community to bond over a book and is designed to deepen our community’s engagement in literature.
Throughout January and February, there will be events and programs centered on In the Distance, book discussions, celebrations, and much more. It is a chance to not only read a great book but to engage with the community, meet new people, and celebrate our shared love of reading.
WestportREADS is funded by the estate of Jerry A. Tishman.
Book Discussion Guide
Read Alikes
Get excited for the WestportREADS Keynote Conversation by discussing this year's selection, In the Distance by Hernan Diaz, with other Westporters. Relive the perilous journey of the American West, reflect upon the ways in which Diaz subverts the Western genre, and connect with other members of your community through this compelling coming-of-age story.
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."
For copies of the book, please call 203-291-4807. New participants are always welcome!
About WestportREADS
Created in 2002, WestportREADS is a way for the Westport community to bond over a book and is designed to deepen our community’s engagement in literature.
Throughout January and February, there will be events and programs centered on In the Distance, book discussions, celebrations, and much more. It is a chance to not only read a great book but to engage with the community, meet new people, and celebrate our shared love of reading.
WestportREADS is funded by the estate of Jerry A. Tishman.
In the Distance Book Discussion Guide
WestportREADS 2025
READ Like a Librarian
Novelist Plus
Brave the Oregon Trail as we watch the 2010 thriller Meek’s Cutoff, as part of WestportREADS 2025!
The year is 1845, the earliest days of the Oregon Trail, and a wagon team of three families has hired the mountain man Stephen Meek to guide them over the Cascade Mountains. Claiming to know a shortcut, Meek leads the group on an unmarked path across the high plain desert, only to become lost in the dry rock and sage. Over the coming days, the emigrants must face the scourges of hunger, thirst and their own lack of faith in each other's instincts for survival. When a Native American wanderer crosses their path, the emigrants are torn between their trust in a guide who has proven himself unreliable and a man who has always been seen as the natural enemy.
“Meek’s Cutoff is the first film I’ve seen that evokes what must have been the reality of wagon trains to the West. They were grueling, dirty, thirsty, burning, and freezing ordeals. Attacks by Indians were not the greatest danger; accidents and disease were. Over the years from watching movie Westerns, I’ve developed a composite image of wagon trains as Conestoga parades led by John Wayne, including lots of women wearing calico dresses, and someone singing 'Red River Valley' beside the campfire. Not here. Director Kelly Reichardt’s strategy is to isolate her story in the vastness of the Oregon Trail, where personalities seem to weaken in the force of the wilderness. She shows three families who bring reality to Robert Frost’s phrase 'vaguely realizing Westward.' They gradually understand that they are hopelessly lost. Their guide, Stephen Meek (Bruce Greenwood), boasts of his accomplishments, but members of the group sense that he is pushing ahead blindly in the hope that somehow the way through the Cascade Mountains will reveal itself.” —Roger Ebert
About WestportREADS
Created in 2002, WestportREADS is a way for the Westport community to bond over a book and is designed to deepen our community’s engagement in literature.
Throughout January and February, there will be events and programs centered on In the Distance, book discussions, celebrations, and much more. It is a chance to not only read a great book but to engage with the community, meet new people, and celebrate our shared love of reading.
WestportREADS is funded by the estate of Jerry A. Tishman.
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The Library is pleased to be able to offer free programs and events through the generous donations of patrons like you. Please consider giving to the Library so that we can continue to offer events like this one. Your donation is tax deductible. Donate Now!
Wagon Trails
The Old West in Film and Literature
Note to patrons: Our WestportREADS screening of The Gold Rush is being postponed, with a makeup date still to be determined, due to an emergency closing of the Library as the result of a burst water pipe. Thanks for your understanding, and please check back to the website for the new screening date.
Watch the 1925 silent film The Gold Rush starring the iconic Charlie Chaplin, as part of WestportREADS 2025!
In this classic silent comedy, the Little Tramp (Charles Chaplin) heads north to join in the Klondike Gold Rush. Trapped in a small cabin by a blizzard, the Tramp is forced to share close quarters with a successful prospector (Mack Swain) and a fugitive (Tom Murray). Eventually able to leave the cabin, he falls for a lovely barmaid (Georgia Hale), trying valiantly to win her affections. When the prospector needs help locating his claim, it appears the Tramp's fortunes may change.
About WestportREADS
Created in 2002, WestportREADS is a way for the Westport community to bond over a book and is designed to deepen our community’s engagement in literature.
Throughout January and February, there will be events and programs centered on In the Distance, book discussions, celebrations, and much more. It is a chance to not only read a great book but to engage with the community, meet new people, and celebrate our shared love of reading.
WestportREADS is funded by the estate of Jerry A. Tishman.
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The Library is pleased to be able to offer free programs and events through the generous donations of patrons like you. Please consider giving to the Library so that we can continue to offer events like this one. Your donation is tax deductible. Donate Now!
The California Gold Rush
The Old West in Film and Literature
WestportREADS 2025
Arts & Culture
Kanopy
Come along for the ride on the Oregon Trail and join us for a screening of the 2019 drama First Cow, as part of WestportREADS 2025!
In 1820, a skilled cook travels west and joins a group of fur trappers in Oregon, though he only finds true connection with a Chinese immigrant also seeking his fortune. Soon the two collaborate on a successful business, although its longevity is reliant upon the clandestine participation of a nearby wealthy landowner’s prized milking cow.
First Cow, adapted by Kelly Reichardt with frequent collaborator Jonathan Raymond from the latter’s novel The Half-Life, is many things. A simultaneously gentle and unsparing dissection of the formative flaws of capitalism, and thus of the American Dream; a frontier story which captures the harsh realities and simple pleasures of a life built painstakingly from rock, wood, and soil; a heist movie; an argument for the power of baked goods. It is somehow both brutal and pastoral, peaceful and laced through with the inevitability of disaster and death. (Nothing fragile can hold forever — not a tree branch, not a ruse, not luck, and not peace, no matter what William Tyler’s beautiful, serene score might trick you into believing.) But above all else, it is a story of friendship, treated here as a haven and basic human need, as essential as water or bread. The film begins with a quote from William Blake’s Proverbs of Hell: 'The bird a nest, the spider a web, man friendship.' And those bones are, for the viewer as well as the woman (Alia Shawkat) who finds them, both an invitation and a door into that friendship." —Allison Shoemaker, RogerEbert.com
About WestportREADS
Created in 2002, WestportREADS is a way for the Westport community to bond over a book and is designed to deepen our community’s engagement in literature.
Throughout January and February, there will be events and programs centered on In the Distance, book discussions, celebrations, and much more. It is a chance to not only read a great book but to engage with the community, meet new people, and celebrate our shared love of reading.
WestportREADS is funded by the estate of Jerry A. Tishman.
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The Library is pleased to be able to offer free programs and events through the generous donations of patrons like you. Please consider giving to the Library so that we can continue to offer events like this one. Your donation is tax deductible. Donate Now!
The Old West in Film and Literature
WestportREADS 2025
Arts & Culture
Kanopy
This WestportREADS 2025 lecture, led by U.S. historian Kris Klein Hernández, contextualizes Hernan Diaz's In the Distance by examining how the book's Swedish protagonist finds himself in California.
Through a study of Indigenous California to 1849 and the Gold Rush, this talk will examine how settler colonialism and manifest destiny facilitated the conditions that led to the rise of transient towns in the North American West. Klein Hernández will explore the rise of informal sex work alongside the formation of religious enclaves that Diaz showcases in the novel, concluding with an investigation of how the impacts of race and nation shaped family and familial relations in the 19th century West.
About Kris Klein Hernández
Dr. Klein Hernández is a U.S. historian of race, gender, and sexuality whose scholarship is located at the nexus of borderlands history and comparative ethnic studies. He specializes in comparative racialization, militarization, and sexuality in the long 19th century, with a focus on the geography of the U.S.-Mexico boundary. He teaches courses on 19th century U.S. history; borderlands history; Vast Early America; settler colonialisms; comparative ethnic histories; U.S. imperialism and empire; and sexuality from the early republic to the present.
He is currently finishing up his first book project, The Color of the Army: Forts and Race-Making in the Nineteenth-Century U.S.-Mexico Borderlands, a cultural history of American militarization from the U.S. war with Mexico to the first World War.
His research has received funding from the Ford Foundation; Harvard University’s Charles Warren Center for Studies in American History; Yale University’s Center for the Study of Race, Indigeneity & Transnational Migration; Institute for Citizens & Scholars; the Social Science Research Council; and the Organization of American Historians.
Klein Hernández received his PhD in American Culture from the University of Michigan, an MA in History from the University of Texas, El Paso, and his AB in Latin American Studies cum laude and Spanish from Bowdoin College. Prior to arriving at Connecticut College, he taught at Harvard University, Yale University, and Bowdoin College.
About WestportREADS
Created in 2002, WestportREADS is a way for the Westport community to bond over a book and is designed to deepen our community’s engagement in literature.
Throughout January and February, there will be events and programs centered on In the Distance, book discussions, celebrations, and much more. It is a chance to not only read a great book but to engage with the community, meet new people, and celebrate our shared love of reading.
WestportREADS is funded by the estate of Jerry A. Tishman.
***
The Library is pleased to be able to offer free programs and events through the generous donations of patrons like you. Please consider giving to the Library so that we can continue to offer events like this one. Your donation is tax deductible. Donate Now!