Hernan Diaz, major contemporary fiction writer and former UAlbany faculty member in the Spanish language program, will present his new novel, Ply (2026), one of the most anticipated books of the year. 

Set in a capitalist dystopia of “haves” and “have-nots,” Ply is an epic work of science fiction that questions the role of technology in the American experiment. 

Diaz won the Pulitzer Prize for the novel, Trust (2022), the story of a Wall Street tycoon and his wife at the time of the 1929 market crash and Great Depression. His first novel, In the Distance (2017), was also a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. 

Born in Argentina and raised in Sweden, Diaz is an internationally recognized scholar of the work of Jorge Luis Borges. 

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Cosponsored by UAlbany’s Department of Languages, Literatures and Cultures, the English Department’s Creative Writing Program and Young Writers Project, UAlbany’s Writing & Critical Inquiry Program (WCI), and the Honors College.