Junot Diaz

Stephen Colbert had author Junot Diaz on his show Monday night to talk about immigration. He introduced Diaz by saying, "My guest tonight won a Nobel Prize and a MacArthur Genius grant. " Sure, Diaz has been racking up awards like nobody's business. He got his MacArthur "Genius" Fellowship in 2012. Last week he won the British Sunday Times EFG Private Bank short story prize -- worth more than $45,000 for a single short story -- with "Miss Lora," one of the stories in his latest collection, "This Is How You Lose Her. "  But he doesn't have a Nobel Prize.

Artist Jean-Michel Basquiat is back -- despite dying in 1988 at age 27. On the first day it was open, more than 4,000 people turned out to see a show of his work at Gagosian Gallery in New York in February. His notebooks will be exhibited at Paris' Musee D'Art Moderne next year. And in January, Sotheby's auctioned some of his paintings; the one above, "Untitled (Pecho/Oreja)," sold for $10.6 million. And now a Basquiat book is being planned by former girlfriend Alexis Adler, who is now a biologist, that will feature a trove of materials she has held onto for years.

The National Book Foundation announced the finalists for the National Book Awards on MSNBC's "Morning Joe" show Wednesday. Junot Diaz, who was recently named a MacArthur “Genius” Fellow, is among the fiction finalists for his short-story collection, “This Is How You Lose Her.” Two other fiction finalists -- Ben Fountain's “Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk” and “The Yellow Birds” by Kevin Powers -- deal with America's long military...

Stephen Colbert had author Junot Diaz on his show Monday night to talk about immigration. He introduced Diaz by saying, "My guest tonight won a Nobel Prize and a MacArthur Genius grant. " Sure, Diaz has been racking up awards like nobody's business. He got his MacArthur "Genius" Fellowship in 2012. Last week he won the British Sunday Times EFG Private Bank short story prize -- worth more than $45,000 for a single short story -- with "Miss Lora," one of the stories in his latest collection, "This Is How You Lose Her. "  But he doesn't have a Nobel Prize.

On Monday, news of who would be named the 2012 MacArthur Fellows leaked out early in reports by the Associated Press and elsewhere. Two writers are among the 23 artists, scientists and thinkers on the list: Junot Diaz and Dinaw Mengestu. Diaz is the author of, most recently, the short story collection "This Is How You Lose Her," published in September. Mengestu's most recent work is the 2010 novel "How to Read the Air. " Both are published by Riverhead. Each author will receive a no-strings-attached "genius grant" of $500,000.

Writer Junot Diaz has always juggled multiple identities: Born in the Dominican Republic, he grew up part nerd, part playboy in New Jersey. His 1996 book of short stories, "Drown," turned some heads, but it wasn't until his debut novel last year, "The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao," that all those identities beautifully collided to make bestseller gold. Suddenly, it's not only literary nerds who know Diaz's name -- or Oscar Wao's. Diaz will be in town for a free reading from the novel at Westwood's Hammer Museum at 7 p.m. Monday.

New York's 92nd Street Y will webcast a conversation with Junot Diaz live on Monday at 5 p.m. Pacific (8 p.m. Eastern). Diaz was in Los Angeles in September to read from his short story collection "This Is How You Lose Her. " The book has spent 10 weeks on the L.A. Times bestseller list. The Times' Hector Tobar praised the book in his review : "Reading the stories in Díaz's new collection, 'This Is How You Lose Her,' is often a three-dimensional, laugh-out-loud experience.

Dominican American writer Junot Diaz is on the shortlist for the Sunday Times EFG Private Bank short story award. The British prize is said to be the world's largest for a single short story: The winner will receive more than $45,000. It's Diaz's story " Miss Lora " that made the list. The story is in his 2012 collection "This Is How You Lose Her. " There are five other authors in contention for the prize: Sarah Hall, Toby Litt, Ali Smith, Mark Haddon, and Cynan Jones. Smith is Scottish, Jones was born in Wales and the others are English.

At the age of 7 when Junot Diaz immigrated to America, he resisted speaking English because he did not like it. Twenty years later, with "Drown" (Riverhead, 1996), his collection of short stories, he has become the first Dominican American male to publish fiction in the very language he initially refused to utter. Already, he is being touted as a literary sensation. Newsweek selected him as one of its noteworthy young "New Faces of 1996."

The empire always strikes back. Cromwell subjugated Ireland 350 years ago; today the British wrestle intractably with the Irish problem and an occasional bomb blast. The French exercised their power and culture in North Africa and prospered; today France's politics and urban urbanity are strained by millions of North African immigrants and also an occasional bomb.

First-time novelist Ben Fountain won the National Book Critics Circle Award for fiction Thursday for “Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk,” a darkly comic send-up of the emotional and cultural aftermath of the Iraq War. The awards were announced in a ceremony in New York. Roberto Caro won the biography award for “The Passage of Power: The Years of Lyndon Johnson,” the fourth installment in Caro's magisterial biography of the thirty-sixth president. The winner in the nonfiction category was Andrew Solomon, for “Far From the Tree: Parents, Children, and the Search for Identity,” a book which the critics' citation described as “a groundbreaking look at family relationships with children who are radically different from their parents' expectations in physical, mental, and behavioral ways.” Other winners included, in poetry, D.A. Powell for “Useless Landscape, or A Guide for Boys," and in criticism, Marina Warner for "Stranger Magic: Charmed States and the Arabian Nights.

Since 2010, the New York- and Venezuela-based Fundación Cisernos has published a series of critically acclaimed books in which several of Latin America's most renowned modern artists speak.   They're gorgeous, thoughtful books, in which creators such as the Argentine-born artist and industrial designer Tomás Maldonado speak at length and freely about the birth of their vision and their careers, often accompanied by illustrations of their work. Now, the Fundación Cisneros/Colección Patricia Phelps de Cisneros is making six of these works available for the first time in e-book format.

A book for children about the Sandy Hook shootings? Random House announced Monday that it will be publishing one this fall. And with an award-winning writer and illustrator at the helm, it just might work. Patricia MacLachlan, who will be writing the story, is best known for her children's book "Sally, Plain and Tall," which won the 1986 Newbery Medal. The art will be done by Steven Kellogg , who has written and/or illustrated about 100 books for children, garnering the New England Book Award and the Regina Medal for distringuished contribution to children's literature.

Dominican American writer Junot Diaz is on the shortlist for the Sunday Times EFG Private Bank short story award. The British prize is said to be the world's largest for a single short story: The winner will receive more than $45,000. It's Diaz's story " Miss Lora " that made the list. The story is in his 2012 collection "This Is How You Lose Her. " There are five other authors in contention for the prize: Sarah Hall, Toby Litt, Ali Smith, Mark Haddon, and Cynan Jones. Smith is Scottish, Jones was born in Wales and the others are English.

New York's 92nd Street Y will webcast a conversation with Junot Diaz live on Monday at 5 p.m. Pacific (8 p.m. Eastern). Diaz was in Los Angeles in September to read from his short story collection "This Is How You Lose Her. " The book has spent 10 weeks on the L.A. Times bestseller list. The Times' Hector Tobar praised the book in his review : "Reading the stories in Díaz's new collection, 'This Is How You Lose Her,' is often a three-dimensional, laugh-out-loud experience.

The National Book Foundation announced the finalists for the National Book Awards on MSNBC's "Morning Joe" show Wednesday. Junot Diaz, who was recently named a MacArthur “Genius” Fellow, is among the fiction finalists for his short-story collection, “This Is How You Lose Her.” Two other fiction finalists -- Ben Fountain's “Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk” and “The Yellow Birds” by Kevin Powers -- deal with America's long military...

    Join me, Carolyn Kellogg, and my colleague, journalist and novelist Hector Tobar, as we talk about the 2012 literary MacArthur Fellows. We'll be doing a Google+ hangout video chat at 10 a.m. Pacific time. Of the 23 2012 MacArthur "Genius" Fellows, two are writers: Junot Diaz and Dinaw Mengestu. Join us as we talk about their work and the effects of the MacArthur grants, which provide a whopping $100,000 per year for five years. ALSO: Arnold Schwarzenegger holds back in "Total Recall" Avert Your Eyes!

As if intending to bring back the emotional scars of not being popular in high school, Amazon has rolled out a beta version of something called Amazon Author Rank. If you are not an Amazon bestseller, you are not going to be in the top. Go on, sit over at the loser table. There are two sides to the Amazon Author Rank . One is the public-facing one, where the 100 top-selling authors appear. The other is for authors' eyes only -- Amazon provides authors with the ability to see their own sales data in a portal called Author Central.