Junot Díaz
Early Life and Education
Junot Díaz was born on December 31, 1968, in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic. He was the third child in a family of five. His father worked in the United States and, when Díaz was six years old, the family moved to Parlin, New Jersey to join him.
Díaz attended Madison Park Elementary and was a voracious reader, being particularly fond of the works of J.R.R. Tolkien and the genre of science fiction. He graduated from Cedar Ridge High School, and later attended Rutgers University where he became involved in Demarest Hall, a creative-writing, living-learning, residence hall.
Career
After graduating from Rutgers, Díaz worked at Rutgers University Press as an editorial assistant. During this time, he also started writing short stories and his work began to appear in literary magazines. Díaz earned his MFA from Cornell University where he wrote most of his first collection of short stories.
Díaz's first book, "Drown," a collection of short stories, was published in 1996 to critical acclaim. The stories deal with Díaz's experiences as an immigrant and the duality of the immigrant experience. His second book, "The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao," was published in 2007. The novel, which took him 11 years to complete, won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 2008. His most recent book, "This Is How You Lose Her," a collection of short stories, was a finalist for the National Book Award in 2012.
Style and Themes
Díaz's work is noted for its focus on the immigrant experience, particularly the Dominican-American experience. He often uses a mix of standard English and Spanish, as well as a liberal use of slang and profanity, which gives his work a distinctive voice. His work also frequently deals with themes of love, masculinity, and the effects of trauma.
Awards and Recognition
Over the course of his career, Díaz has received numerous awards and honors for his work. In addition to the Pulitzer Prize, he has received the PEN/Malamud Award, the National Book Critics Circle Award, and a MacArthur Fellowship, often referred to as the "genius grant."
Personal Life
Díaz is currently a professor of creative writing at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and the fiction editor at the Boston Review. He is also a co-founder of Voices of Our Nation Arts Foundation, which focuses on writers of color.
