Junot Díaz

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Junot Díaz is a contemporary Latin American writer whose collection of short stories featured in the book Drown became an overnight literary sensation.

The stories in Drown are: "Ysrael", "Fiesta, 1980", "Aurora", "Drown", "Boyfriend", "Edison, New Jersey", "How to Date a Browngirl, Blackgirl, Whitegirl, or Halfie", "No Face", "Negocios".

Diaz is the first Dominican-born man to become a major writer in the United States. He moved to the United States with his parents at age six, settling in New Jersey. The New Yorker magazine placed him on a list of the 20 top writers for the 21st century.

Diaz graduated from Cedar Ridge High School in Old Bridge, New Jersey in 1987. He then went on to complete his under-graduate studies at Rutgers University located in New Jersey. He earned his MFA degree from Cornell University in Ithaca, New York in 1995. He is currently a creative writing professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

His first novel, the Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, a portion of which was once excerpted as a short story in the New Yorker, is slated for release in September of 2007.