Junot Díaz's fiction has appeared in
The New Yorker,
The Paris Review, and
The Best American Short Stories. His debut book,
Drown, was met with unprecedented acclaim; it became a national bestseller, earned him a PEN/Malamud Award, and has since grown into a landmark of contemporary literature. His first novel,
The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, was published in 2007 and won the 2008 Pulitzer Prize. In 2012, the MacArthur Foundation awarded him a MacArthur Fellowship, popularly known as the "Genius Grant", $500,000 over five years, no strings attached.
Born in the Dominican Republic and raised in New Jersey, Díaz is a professor of writing at MIT.
