Junot Díaz

Junot Díaz's fiction has appeared in The New Yorker, The Paris Review, and The Best American Short Stories. His debut story collection, Drown was a national bestseller and won numerous awards. Michiko Kakutani of The New York Times called Díaz's novel The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao “a book that decisively establishes him as one of contemporary fiction's most distinctive and irresistible new voices.”

From his Q & A with Anna Metcalfe of the Financial Times:

What book changed your life?

I would say Enid Blyton’s Five on a Treasure Island, which I read when I was seven, because it turned me into a reader. But Toni Morrison’s Song of Solomon also transformed me as a reader and as a person, when I was a callow youth of 18.

When did you know you were going to be a writer?

I was afraid of being a writer at first. The practical, immigrant side of me said it was a ridiculous thing to do. It was only when I held a copy of my first book, Drown, in my hands that my resistance was blown apart.

Read the complete Q & A.

Read about Díaz's 5 most important books.

The Page 99 Test: The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao.

--Marshal Zeringue