Jaquira Díaz

Born in Puerto Rico, Jaquira Díaz was raised between Humacao, Fajardo, and Miami Beach. She is the author of Ordinary Girls: A Memoir, winner of a Whiting Award, a Florida Book Awards Gold Medal, a Lambda Literary Awards finalist, and finalist for the B&N Discover Prize. The recipient of the Jeanne Córdova Prize for Lesbian/Queer Nonfiction, the Alonzo Davis Fellowship from VCCA, two Pushcart Prizes, an Elizabeth George Foundation grant, and fellowships from MacDowell, the Kenyon Review, Bread Loaf, Sewanee, the Wisconsin Institute for Creative Writing, and the Black Mountain Institute at UNLV, Díaz has written for The Atlantic, The Guardian, Time Magazine, and T: The New York Times Style Magazine, and her stories, poems, and essays have been anthologized in The Best American Essays and The Breakbeat Poets Vol. 4: LatiNext. Her debut novel, This Is the Only Kingdom, was longlisted for the Center for Fiction First Novel Prize. She lives in New York and teaches at Columbia University.