Diaz, who won the 2008 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction for "The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao" and teaches creative writing at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, said Friday that it was an "extraordinary honor."
"It certainly taps into the thing I love to do best, which is to read," said Diaz, who was born in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic and immigrated to New Jersey as a child.
Columbia University, where the awards were established, announced his election to the board Thursday. The board has 20 members — 18 voting and two nonvoting. Members serve three-year terms and cannot serve more than three terms.
"The Pulitzer Prize absolutely fundamentally changed my life and career as an artist," said the 41-year-old Diaz, who graduated with a degree in English from Rutgers University. "I keep thinking, `Wow, I get the chance to do that for a whole bunch of people. Not just me alone, of course."
Diaz grew up in Parlin, N.J., and described his childhood as "working poor, welfare, Section 8, living next to a landfill." He said he put off calling the Pulitzer board about an invitation to lunch to talk about his election for at least six weeks because he was too busy with his work.
"I kept putting off the lunch, which is really kind of stupid because they were trying to give me this wonderful honor," he said. - AP
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