American novelist Junot Diaz has been elected to serve on the Pulitzer board, which awards the most prestigious prizes in journalism. 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, which administers the prizes, announced his election to the board Thursday. The board has 20 members - 18 voting and two nonvoting - and members serve three-year 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 back for at least six weeks because he was too busy with his work. “I kept putting off the (awards) lunch, which is really kind of stupid because they were trying to give me this wonderful honor,” he said. Co-chairman David Kennedy, a professor of history at Stanford, said the board is very excited to recognize a fresh new voice in American fiction. He described Diaz's prose as a blend of Dominican Spanish and American English. “So we hope that's the voice he brings to the deliberations of the board as well,” Kennedy said.
