Junot Díaz Pulls Out of Writers’ Festival Amid Misconduct Claims

Pulitzer Prize-winning author Junot Díaz has dropped out of a writers’ festival in Australia a day after being confronted with sexual harassment allegations during a Q&A session for the event. Organizers of the Sydney Writers’ Festival on Saturday suggested the accusations may mark a moment of reckoning for the writer, who just weeks ago penned an essay detailing his own sexual abuse as a child. “In his recent New Yorker essay, Mr. Diaz wrote, ‘Eventually the past finds you.’ As for so many in positions of power, the moment to reckon with the consequences of past behavior has arrived,” organizers said in a statement. Author Zinzi Clemmons had called out Díaz for alleged sexual misconduct a day earlier, publicly accusing him of mistreating her when she was a graduate student. She later alleged on Twitter that Díaz had forcibly kissed her at a writing workshop, prompting two other writers, Carmen Maria Machado and Monica Byrne, to accuse him of misogyny and inappropriate behavior.