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Junot Díaz (born December 31, 1968) is a Dominican-American writer. His first novel The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao was published in September 2007. In 2008 it won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. It also won the John Sargent Sr. First Novel Prize. His next novel has not been published yet. It is called Monstro.
Díaz was born in Villa Juana, a neighborhood in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic. In December 1974 he moved to New Jersey.
He lives with Marjorie Liu.
Díaz's first collection of short stories, Drown, was published in 1996. His first novel, The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao was published in 2007. It is about a Dominican boy called Oscar Wao, who is growing up in New Jersey. It took him 11 years to write. The book uses both English and Spanish. In 2012 Díaz released a collection of short stories called This Is How You Lose Her. He was given the $500,000 MacArthur "Genius grant" award. In 2013 he won the £30,000 Sunday Times EFG Private Bank short story prize. Díaz joins other Hispanic-American writers such as Gloria Anzaldúa, Sandra Cisneros, and Giannina Braschi who use Spanglish phrases in their stories. Spanglish is a mix of English words and Spanish words.