Not every Pulitzer Prize winner can say their novel brought a celebrity couple together. Hernan Diaz can. (Bookworms Dua Lipa and Callum Turner!) The Argentinian author won the award for Trust, about a 1920s Wall Street tycoon. His follow-up? This September’s Ply, which imagines one possible future for a crumbling American empire.
What’s one work of art that got you through an important moment in your life?
The unlikely combination of Johann Sebastian Bach, John Coltrane, and a handful of extremely shouty bands has provided the soundtrack to both the hardest and happiest times in my life.
Where do you feel most at home?
In the English language.
What do you think is your biggest contribution to culture?
My awareness campaign for syntactic responsibility.
When you were little, what were you known for?
My impressions—a talent I’ve been lucky enough to lose.
What question do you ask yourself most often while you’re making work?
Does this sentence do many things at once?
What’s been the hardest part of your career so far?
Failing, day after day, to combine formal rigor with depth of feeling.
What keeps you up at night?
That noise, this worry, those memories, these vague aches.
What are you looking forward to this year?
A thorough sleep study that I booked about a year ago.
What would you be doing if you weren’t working in your field?
My range is so limited; I’d be toast outside the world of books.
What grounds you, and what invigorates you?
A fantastic dinner will both ground and invigorate.
To read more from the 2026 CULT100 honorees, see the full list here.
in your life?
