Junot Díaz is a Dominican-American Pulitzer Prize-winning author whose fiction is celebrated for its distinct voice, “addictive prose,” and unique ability to capture the contemporary American immigrant experience. Born in Santo Domingo and raised in New Jersey, Díaz’s writing offers powerful insight into the struggle and personal growth of leaving a culture and homeland behind.
Díaz’s debut book, Drown, a collection of short stories, was published in 1996. A dozen years later, he won the Pulitzer Prize for his first novel, The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, which was cited for its use of “raw, vernacular dialogue and spare, unsentimental prose to draw readers into the various and distinct worlds that immigrants must straddle.” His latest book, This Is How You Lose Her, another collection of short stories, is a finalist for a 2012 National Book Award.
Díaz’s writing has appeared in magazines and anthologies including The New Yorker, The Paris Review, and Best American Short Stories. He is the recipient of the MacArthur “Genius” Fellowship, the PEN/Malamud Award, the Dayton Literary Peace Prize, a Guggenheim Fellowship, and the PEN/O. Henry Award.
Currently the Rudge and Nancy Allen Professor of Writing at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and fiction editor at Boston Review, Díaz received his Bachelors degree from Rutgers University and a Master of Fine Arts from Cornell University.
