Junot Díaz was born in the Dominican Republic and raised in New Jersey. He is the author of the critically acclaimed Drown; The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, which won the 2008 Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Critics Circle Award; and This Is How You Lose Her, a New York Times bestseller and National Book Award finalist.
He is the recipient of a MacArthur “Genius” Fellowship, PEN/Malamud Award, Dayton Literary Peace Prize, Guggenheim Fellowship, and PEN/O. Henry Award.
A graduate of Rutgers College, Díaz is currently the fiction editor at Boston Review and the Rudge and Nancy Allen Professor of Writing at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
✦ He is an activist who supports the cause of immigrants in the U.S.
✦ His family lived in a poor part of New Jersey populated primarily by Dominicans.
✦ He has been the recipient of many awards and fellowships.
He is the cofounder of Voices of Our Nation Workshop. VONA is the only multi-genre workshop for writers of color.
