Born in Puerto Rico, Jaquira Díaz was raised between Humacao, Fajardo, and Miami Beach. She is the author of ORDINARY GIRLS, winner of a Whiting Award, a Florida Book Awards Gold Medal, a Lambda Literary Awards finalist, an American Booksellers Association Indies Introduce Selection, a Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers Selection, an Indie Next pick, a LibraryReads pick, and finalist for the B&N Discover Prize. ORDINARY GIRLS was optioned for television and is currently in development.

The recipient of a Letras Boricuas Fellowship, 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, T: The New York Times Style Magazine, and The Fader, and her stories, poems and essays have been anthologized in The Best American Essays, The Breakbeat Poets Vol. 4: LatiNext, Best American Experimental Writing and The Pushcart Prize anthology. In 2022, she held the Mina Hohenberg Darden Chair in Creative Writing at Old Dominion University’s MFA program and a Pabst Endowed Chair for Master Writers at the Atlantic Center for the Arts.

Her debut novel is THIS IS THE ONLY KINGDOM, longlisted for the Center for Fiction 2025 First Novel Prize. She lives in New York and teaches at Columbia University.

Books by Jaquira Díaz

This Is the Only Kingdom

by Jaquira Díaz - Fiction

When Maricarmen meets Rey el Cantante, the beloved small-time Robin Hood and local musician on the rise, she begins to envision a life beyond the tight-knit community of el Caserío, Puerto Rico. But breaking free proves more difficult than she imagined, and she soon finds herself struggling to make a home for herself; Rey; his young brother, Tito; and, eventually, their daughter, Nena. Until one fateful day changes everything. Fifteen years later, Maricarmen and Nena find themselves in the middle of a murder investigation as the community that once rallied to support Rey turns against them. Now Nena, a teenager haunted by loss and betrayal and exploring her sexual identity, must learn to fight for herself and her family in a world not always welcoming.

Ordinary Girls: A Memoir

by Jaquira Díaz - Memoir, Nonfiction

While growing up in housing projects in Puerto Rico and Miami Beach, Jaquira Díaz found herself caught between extremes. As her family split apart and her mother battled schizophrenia, she was supported by the love of her friends. As she longed for a family and home, her life was upended by violence. As she celebrated her Puerto Rican culture, she couldn’t find support for her burgeoning sexual identity. From her own struggles with depression and sexual assault to Puerto Rico’s history of colonialism, every page of ORDINARY GIRLS vibrates with music and lyricism. Díaz writes with raw and refreshing honesty, triumphantly mapping a way out of despair toward love and hope, to become her version of the girl she always wanted to be.