Junot Díaz was born in Santo Domingo, the Dominican Republic. At the age of six, he moved to New Jersey with his parents. He earned his MFA from Cornell University, New York. His work has appeared in The New Yorker, The Paris Review, African Voices, Best American Fiction (1996, 1997, 1999, 2000) and The O’Henry Prize Stories 2009; and was included in the ‘20 Writers for the 21st Century’ issue of The New Yorker (1999). Díaz received a Pushcart Prize for his story Invierno. Díaz’s story collection, Drown, is in its 23rd printing. His first novel, The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao (2007), received several awards, including the Pulitzer Prize and remained on The New York Times and independent bookstore bestseller lists for two years. Díaz is the fiction editor at the Boston Review and teaches creative writing at Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Díaz has been active in a number of community organizations in New York City, from Pro-Libertad, to the Dominican Workers Party (Partido Trabajador Dominicano) and the Unión de Jóvenes Dominicanos. He has been critical of immigration policy in the US and, with fellow author Edwidge Danticat, published an op-ed piece in The New York Times condemning the illegal deportation of Haitians and Haitian Dominicans in the Dominican Republic.

Junot Díaz is sponsored by City University of Hong Kong. Photo credit: Lily Oei