Oscar Hijuelos
Hijuelos began his writing career while working days in an advertising agency. His first novel, "Our House in the Last World," won several awards including The American Academy of Arts and Letters' Rome Prize, a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts and an Ingram-Merrill fellowship. Hijuelos won the 1990 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, marking the first time a Hispanic writer won this award, for his second novel, "Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love." The novel examines an immigrant family's Cuban migration to the United States in the 1940's and was made into a movie starring Antonio Banderas and Armand Assante.
The most recent novel by Hijuelos, "Empress of the Splendid Season," is also receiving positive reviews. In early September 2000, Hijuelos will be honored at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C. as part of the National Hispanic Heritage Awards. This event will be televised on NBC TV.
Hijuelos received both his bachelor's and master's degrees from the City University of New York.
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