A Novelist, professor and a Pulitzer Prize Awardee for Fiction for his Novel “The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao”. Junot Diaz was born in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic. He then migrated to Parlin, New Jersey at the age of 6 to live with his father. As a teenager, Diaz was heavily into reading books. He was more into apocalyptic films and novels such as “The Planet of the Apes”.
He then attended Kean College in Union, New Jersey for a year and later completing his Bachelor of Arts at Rutgers College in 1992, majoring in English. As a student, he financed himself by working as a dishwasher, gas station attendant and delivering pool tables.
After graduating from Rutgers University, Junot Diaz was hired as an editorial assistant at the university press. He wrote most of his collection of short stories in Ithaca, New York where he earned his Master of Fine Arts. In September 6, 2007 he published the fiction-novel “The Brief Wondrous life of Oscar Wao” which is based from his experience under his hometown dictator Rafael Truillo. The Novel was critically successful; it was praised by critics which eventually gave him his first Pulitzer Prize for Fiction the year after.
Diaz also wrote a few short stories which gained him critical praise. These are “How to Date a Browngirl, Blackgirl, Whitegirl, or Halfie”, “Otravida, Otravez”, “Wildwood” and his most recent work “The Pura Principle”. Junot Diaz is currently teaching creative writing students at Massachusetts Institute of Technology.