1. He was born December 31, 1968 in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic.
2. He lived in the Dominican with his mother until he emigrated to Parlin, New Jersey in 1974, where he re-united with his father.
3. He finished his BA in English at Rutgers in 1992.
4. After graduation, he was employed at Rutgers University Press as an editorial assistant.
5. He earned his MFA from Cornell in 1995.
6. He teaches creative writing at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
7. His short stories have appeared in The New Yorker, Story and The Paris Review.
8. His first book, a short story collection called Drown, was published in 1996.
9. His second book, a novel called The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, was published in 2007; it won the Pulitzer Prize and Miramax has the film rights.
10. His awards include a Eugene McDermott Award, a Lila Acheson Wallace Readers Digest Award, a Pen/Malamud Award, and the Rome Prize from the American Academy of Arts and Letters.
Have you read anything by Junot Díaz? I haven't yet, but his novel is on my 100 books list. I'm hoping I like his book about the immigrant experience as much as I like Jhumpa Lahiri's.
