TULSA, Okla. --- Pulitzer Prize-winning and bestselling Argentine American author Hernan Diaz is coming to Tulsa Dec. 4 and 5 to receive the 2025 Peggy V. Helmerich Distinguished Author Award, given by the Tulsa City-County Library and Tulsa Library Trust.
Diaz will receive the Helmerich Award, which consists of a $40,000 cash prize and an engraved crystal book, at a black-tie gala in his honor on Friday, Dec. 5. He will give a free public presentation at 5:30 p.m. on Thursday, Dec. 4, and speak about his life and works, answer questions and sign autographs. Copies of his books will be available for purchase at the event. Both presentations will take place at Central Library, Fifth Street and Denver Avenue.
Diaz is the Pulitzer Prize-winning and New York Times bestselling author of two novels published in 37 languages. He was the recipient of 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, and it was 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.
His second novel, “Trust,” received the Pulitzer Prize for fiction and was a New York Times bestseller, the winner of the Kirkus Prize and longlisted for the Booker Prize, among other nominations. It was listed as a best book of the year by over 30 publications and named one of the 10 Best Books of the Year by The New York Times, The Washington Post, NPR and Time magazine, and was one of The New Yorker’s 12 Essential Reads of the Year and one of The New York Times’ Best 100 Books of the 21st Century. “Trust” is currently being developed as a limited series for HBO, starring Kate Winslet.
Diaz’s stories and essays have appeared in The Paris Review, Harper’s, The Atlantic, Granta, The Yale Review, Playboy, McSweeney’s and elsewhere. He has been awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Whiting Award and fellowships from the New York Public Library’s Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers, the Rockefeller Foundation and the Civitella Ranieri Foundation, among others. He holds a doctorate from NYU and is also the author of the nonfiction “Borges, Between History and Eternity.”
For more information about the Distinguished Author Award, visit www.tulsalibrary.org/helmerichaward or call 918-549-7323.