What piece of art changed your life? How did it affect you?

Poison River, a graphic novel by Gilbert Hernandez, gave me a master lesson in real writing. It was beautiful beyond words and violent and tender and heartbreaking. From that moment on, I knew what kind of writer I wanted to be. It's the great unknown novel of the 20th Century.

Junot Diaz, the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, appears at the City Lit Festival on April 18th.