New Jersey.– Junot Diaz was visiting his mother in Ridgefield Park earlier this month when he got the call that he'd won the 2008 Pulitzer Prize for literature for "The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao," his first novel.

The book is set in New Jersey and features several of the state's locales, including Paterson, the hometown of the Dominican protagonist. Diaz, 39, is a graduate of Rutgers University. He now lives in East Harlem and teaches at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. But he can't shake New Jersey or his native Dominican Republic. We spoke to him recently.

On the Pulitzer: "I'm still kind of overwhelmed ... I've done 80 interviews in five days. But, I'll be back to utter anonymity before you can get this into your computer."

On the New Jersey settings in his work: "Paterson was important for reasons that didn't quite make it into the novel. ... I've never seen a city that was more defined by its immigrants ... no city more emblematic of what America is and what it aspires to be and how that has fallen.

"I'm basically making an argument in the novel that in the center of the history of the world is the Dominican Republic, and the center of history of the United States is New Jersey. Both are side notes to their larger neighbors. I grew up as a side note. ... There was a time when all I wanted to do was leave New Jersey and when I left I wasn't that impressed. Coming home is not that bad."

On his next project: "I'm trying to work on a crazy Dominican 'Akira' novel. A futuristic novel. If you could imagine Dominicans 100 years from now in a New York City plagued by psychic terrorists. It's utterly insane. ..."

To read the whole article click here.