The Pulitzer prize board has said it will launch an independent review of the misconduct allegations against Junot Díaz, and that the author will relinquish the role of chairman of the board.

The board said in a statement on Thursday that Díaz, a Pulitzer prize-winning author and creative writing professor, had asked to relinquish the chairman role, to which he was elected in April on the basis of seniority.

Díaz remains on the board, the statement said, adding that he welcomes the review and will cooperate fully.

After confronting the writer at a Sydney Writers’ festival event last week, the author Zinzi Clemmons tweeted that Díaz forcibly kissed her several years ago. Other female writers also shared their encounters with Diaz on social media.

MIT, where Díaz is a professor, is also looking into the allegations. A spokeswoman for the university in Cambridge, Massachusetts didn’t immediately comment on the status of the inquiry. The Cambridge public library also announced on Wednesday it has canceled its annual Summer Reading Kick-Off featuring Díaz. It had been slated for 16 May.

The Pulitzer board said that Eugene Robinson, the board’s immediate past chairman, has resumed the role on an interim basis.

Díaz, one of his generation’s most acclaimed Latino voices, won the Pulitzer prize in 2008 in the fiction category for The Brief Wonderous Life of Oscar Wao. In a New Yorker essay last month, he wrote on the legacy of childhood trauma, revealing he had been repeatedly raped by an adult when he was eight years old.

Díaz has been contacted for comment.