Junot Diaz and Min Jin Lee took to the stage for a con­ver­sa­tion at the Asian Amer­i­can Writ­ers Work­shop Page Turner Fes­ti­val, held at Pow­er­house Books in Dumbo. We were amazed at how many peo­ple showed up despite the apoc­a­lyp­tic weather of sleet, wind and freezingless.

Junot was hum­ble and inspir­ing as always. A long time friend of the Work­shop, Junot hasn’t changed, despite win­ning the Pulitzer Prize (among many other hon­ors) for The Brief and Won­drous Life of Oscar Wao. He and Min Jin met in Korea on a State Depart­ment cul­tural trip of sorts, where she was sup­posed to be the Korean Amer­i­can, and he was sup­posed to “the American”

Here are some tid­bits from the talk, par­tially from my own notes and par­tially from the lovely tweet­ing by Sepia Mutiny. Some of these may be slightly off in our haste to take notes.

Junot quit writ­ing his novel twice for over a year. Some­times you just enter a “free fall” where “you don’t believe your words are worth any­thing.” It took him ~13 years to write novel (Min Jin took 12, beat him by a year, she said.)

Junot said, “I live in the uni­verse of doubt. The hard part isn’t writ­ing the book — it’s fin­ish­ing it.” He added, “To fin­ish a book, you need com­pas­sion for your­self.” He added, “I looked into a mir­ror and said, “It’s okay. You suck.’”