Jaquira Díaz

Jaquira Díaz
Jaquira Díaz at AWP Conference 2014
Born Humacao, Puerto Rico
Occupation Writer

Jaquira Díaz is a Puerto Rican fiction writer, essayist, journalist, cultural critic, and contributor to many notable periodicals. Her work has appeared in The Best American Essays, The Kenyon Review, Tin House, The Sun, The Fader, Rolling Stone, The Guardian, The Southern Review[1] and other places. As of 2016 she lived and worked in Miami Beach, Florida. [2] [3]

Early life

Jaquira Díaz was born in Puerto Rico. Growing up, her family lived in the Puerto Rican housing projects, colloquially referred to as el caserío. The neighborhood was made up of government housing, and had something of a dangerous reputation. Díaz, in an interview she gave Origins, tells stories of being menaced by a machete-armed man, and of raids by the local Police force, referred to as los camarones.[4] When she was older, her family moved to Miami. Growing up in Miami Beach during what she describes as the city's "urban blight,"[5] [6] her life was difficult, and was marked by drug use, attempts at suicide, and encounters with the law.[7] [8] Díaz contributes some of her identity issues to being what she describes as "a closeted queer girl" in a neighborhood where gay people where harassed and attacked. Another issue was the family's financial situation. Her father, who had studied at the University of Puerto Rico and whom she describes as a lover of poetry and literature, became a drug dealer in order to support the family.[9] As she grew older, writing continued to be an important outlet, and her writing developed a semi-autobiographical character, often dealing with suicide, drug use, and identity.[10]

Career

Díaz's fiction and essays, which are predominantly set in Puerto Rico and Miami, have been described as "lyrical" and "urgent" and are often focused on the intensely personal tragedies and triumphs of young women maturing in a dangerous world.[11] In addition to her literary writing, Díaz writes about crime, politics, sexuality, race, music, and culture, and has been described as an elegant prose stylist,[12] and as "part of a necessary cipher of extremely gifted freestylers" that includes writers Ta-Nehisi Coates, Isabel Wilkerson, Carol Anderson, Claudia Rankine, Terrance Hayes, Kiese Laymon, Rachel Kaadzi Ghansah, Junot Díaz, and Jelani Cobb.[13] In 2017, she was listed among Remezcla's "15 Latinx Music Journalists You Should be Reading"[14] and was included in NPR's Alt.Latino's Favorites: The Songs of 2017, as one of "the cream of the crop of Latinx music writers."[15]

Díaz holds a B.A. from the University of Central Florida and an M.F.A. from the University of South Florida. HAs been the recipient of fellowships from The Kenyon Review, the Wisconsin Institute for Creative Writing at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, the Ragdale Foundation, the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, The MacDowell Colony, the Tin House Summer Writers’ Workshop, the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, and the Sewanee Writers' Conference, as well as an NEA Distinguished Fellowship from the Hambidge Center for the Creative Arts and Sciences.[16]

Díaz is at work on her first nonfiction book, Ordinary Girls, a memoir that will explore themes of girlhood, growing up in Miami Beach, and the story of Ana Cardona, a woman convicted of murdering her child in 1990.[17]

Publications

Essays

Short Stories

Other Work

Awards and honors

References

  1. ↑ Ruiz, Matthew Ismael (16 October 2017). "15 Latinx Music Journalists You Should Be Reading". Remezcla. Retrieved 16 December 2017.
  2. ↑ MacCauley, Jennifer Maritza (5 March 2016). "Life, Story, Action: Jaquira Díaz". Origins. Retrieved 16 December 2017.
  3. ↑ "Ask a Local: Jaquira Díaz, Miami Beach, FL". The Common. 30 July 2015. Retrieved 17 December 2017.
  4. ↑ MacCauley, Jennifer Maritza (5 March 2016). "Life, Story, Action: Jaquira Díaz". Origins. Retrieved 16 December 2017.
  5. ↑ "Ask a Local: Jaquira Díaz, Miami Beach, FL". The Common. 30 July 2015. Retrieved 17 December 2017.
  6. ↑ Martinez, Nicole (17 September 2015). "15 Views of Miami, as told by Jaquira Díaz". The New Tropic. Retrieved 11 January 2018.
  7. ↑ Martinez, Nicole (17 September 2015). "15 Views of Miami, as told by Jaquira Díaz". The New Tropic. Retrieved 11 January 2018.
  8. ↑ "The Kenyon Review Conversations: Jaquira Díaz". The Kenyon Review. 1 November 2015. Retrieved 17 December 2017.
  9. ↑ Philyaw, Deesha. "VISIBLE: Women Writers of Color: Jaquira Díaz". Retrieved 16 December 2017.
  10. ↑ MacCauley, Jennifer Maritza (5 March 2016). "Life, Story, Action: Jaquira Díaz". Origins. Retrieved 16 December 2017.
  11. ↑ Philyaw, Deesha (17 August 2016). "VISIBLE: Women Writers of Color: Jaquira Díaz". The Rumpus. Retrieved 16 December 2017.
  12. ↑ Peña, Daniel. "Las Damas: The New Generation of Latina Writers". Ploughshares. Retrieved 16 December 2017.
  13. ↑ Muyumba, Walton (29 September 2017). "Ta-Nehisi Coates blazes a singular intellectual path in 'We Were Eight Years in Power'". Los Angeles Times. Retrieved 16 December 2017.
  14. ↑ Ruiz, Matthew Ismael (16 October 2017). "15 Latinx Music Journalists You Should Be Reading". Remezcla. Retrieved 16 December 2017.
  15. ↑ Contreras, Felix (21 December 2017). "Alt.Latino's Favorites: The Songs of 2017". NPR.org (Alt.Latino). Retrieved 23 December 2017.
  16. ↑ "The Kenyon Review Fellowships History". www.kenyonreview.org. Retrieved 2017-12-16.
  17. ↑ Musgrave-Johnson, Devon (September 15, 2016). "Meet the New KR Fellows, Margaree Little and Jaquira Diaz". Kenyon Collegian.
  18. ↑ "2017 International Literary Award Winners". The Center for Women Writers. 1 August 2017. Retrieved 16 December 2017.
  19. ↑ "The Essay Prize 2016 Nominees". The Essay Prize. 1 October 2016. Retrieved 1 December 2017.
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