From a young age, Christina Diaz Gonzalez loved words. She read voraciously and dreamed of seeing her name on book covers. It never dawned on her that growing up to be a writer was a possibility. “Writing novels was something other people did,” she said.
Her earliest efforts, replete with a child’s wayward grammar and punctuation, were the first steps in a journey that ultimately led to her current career: best-selling, award-winning author of children’s and young adult fiction. It was a roundabout journey, but as Diaz Gonzalez remarked, “every facet of [one’s life] influences the next.” And the stages of her life—childhood, college, law school, and parenthood—all shaped her writing success.
Diaz Gonzalez grew up in the Florida panhandle, the daughter of Cuban parents and, apart from her sister, the only Spanish-speaking kid in her neighborhood. Yet along with her Cuban roots, she loved her small-town Southern childhood, including the treehouse where she spent hours feeding her imagination—and her dream—through reading and writing.
With her best friend from high school, Diaz Gonzalez followed her father, a 1968 graduate of the University of Miami, to his alma mater. She embarked on a degree in accounting at what is now the Patti and Allan Herbert Business School, yet she never quite let go of her dream.
She credits her classes for imparting a sense of analytical rigor that underpins her creative work. “Business school taught me how to tackle problems and see situations from different angles, to use both sides of my brain,” she said. “I am not always methodical in how I write, but what I write has to make sense. My training helped that side of my brain in ways I could use in my creative writing.”
She also pointed out that her undergraduate training gave her the business skills that many creative writers lack and that are necessary for making a living. “You have to be conversant with the business side of things,” she said.
By her senior year, Diaz Gonzalez realized she didn’t want to be an accountant. She was still passionate about reading and writing, so she attended law school, reasoning that lawyers do plenty of both. “I took a business law class at UM that I loved, so I thought perhaps I would pursue that field,” she recalled.
After law school, Diaz Gonzalez set up practice in Miami, married, and started a family. It was her elder son who reignited her passion for writing. “He was a big reader from a young age … I remember him reading a story I had written and hearing him laugh from across the room. I was hooked and wanted to see how far this could take me.”
The inspiration for her first published work was profoundly personal. Her parents came to the United States from Cuba as part of Operation Pedro Pan, which brought more than 14,000 Cuban children to this country between 1960 and 1962. Their experiences of upheaval and separation from parents, families, and homeland are retold through the story of a young girl who left behind all she knew in Cuba to find refuge in the American Midwest.
A chance encounter with an editor at Random House prompted Diaz Gonzalez to finish the short story and turn it into a novel. Titled The Red Umbrella (La Sombrilla Roja) and published in 2010, the book was acclaimed by critics and won numerous awards. Florida recently included it in the titles used for its statewide educational standards for seventh-grade English and language arts.
Seven more novels followed, in genres that include historical fiction, mystery, and action- adventure. In The Bluest Sky, published in 2022, Diaz Gonzalez tells the story of the 1980 Mariel boatlift, through which several members of her extended family came to Florida.
Concealed, published in 2021, is a mystery thriller centered on a young girl whose family is in witness protection. In 2022, Concealed won the Edgar® Award for best juvenile mystery fiction. Named for Edgar Allen Poe and presented by the Mystery Writers of America, the Edgars have a nearly 80-year history. The roll of winners is a who’s who of mystery writers. Diaz Gonzalez is the first Latina author to be nominated and the first to win in the juvenile mystery fiction category.
Diaz Gonzalez’s most recent work is Invisible, a graphic novel with illustrations by Gabriela Epstein that presents a classic slice of middle school life. Inspired by the 1985 film The Breakfast Club, Diaz Gonzalez creates five characters who have nothing in common except they are all Hispanic and are seen as all the same by some people around them.
The misconception that the Hispanic diaspora is a monolith is one that Diaz Gonzalez is eager to dispel in her fiction. All her protagonists are Hispanic. Either their stories are a matter of historical record, as in The Red Umbrella and The Bluest Sky, or, as she said, “they just happen to be Hispanic.” Their adventures and personalities reflect the rich diversity of Hispanic culture and society in ways that resonate with Diaz Gonzalez’s young readers.
“I think all kids should be able to see themselves as the hero, whether in an action-adventure or historical novel or mystery,” she said. “It’s important that readers see Hispanic kids as they really are.”
Diaz Gonzalez said that her themes and inspirations come from everywhere. Many are universal. “[For example], my drawing on my family history is about the idea of home and wanting to figure out what home is and where the places and people who will love and accept you are. I’m always very receptive to whatever the universe wants to inspire me next!”
