Hernan Diaz

Hernan Diaz was born in Buenos Aires, Argentina. At age two, his family fled to Sweden following the 1976 military coup, returning when democracy was restored seven years later. Diaz studied in Argentina and London before moving to the United States to pursue a PhD in comparative literature at New York University.

A writer and associate director of the Hispanic Institute at Columbia University, Diaz is the author of four books that have been translated into 37 languages. In 2022, he released Trust, a novel exploring wealth, class, greed, and ambition through interlinked narratives. The book won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and the Kirkus Prize and is being developed as a limited HBO series.

Diaz’s first novel, In the Distance (2017), a revisionist Western tale about a young Swedish immigrant who wanders east across the country in search of his lost brother, was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize and the PEN/Faulkner Award.

Speaking to The Paris Review about the book, he said, “The experience of foreignness has determined my entire life. I wanted to recreate that feeling…. But at the same time, this is a very American story, which makes us remember that foreignness is part of the American experience to begin with.”

Diaz has also received the John Updike Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, a Guggenheim Fellowship, and a Whiting Award, among other honors. His latest novel, Ply, will be released in September 2026.

Photo by Pascal Perich. Published June 2026