Biography
Jose Hernandez Diaz is the author of a debut chapbook of prose poems, The Fire Eater, published in 2020. “I tend to write surreal, absurd, and existential poems,” Diaz says. “I mix in Mexican-American imagery, such as jaguars, boxing, and piñatas.” A first-generation son of Mexican immigrants, he grew up in a working-class Latinx neighborhood in southern California, with brothers in gangs. Diaz holds degrees in English and creative writing from the University of California, Berkeley, and Antioch University Los Angeles. His work has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and he received a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts in 2017. His poetry appears in the Los Angeles Review, Rattle, Poetry, and other journals, and he has been a finalist for prizes including the Andrés Montoya Poetry Prize, The Wisconsin Series, and The National Poetry Series. He lives in Southeast Los Angeles County, where he is an editor and educator.