Jaquira Díaz: You’re Making Art, Not a Product
In this interview, author Jaquira Díaz discusses writing from a place of communal love with her debut novel, This Is the Only Kingdom.
Jaquira Díaz is the author of Ordinary Girls, winner of a Whiting Award, a Florida Book Awards Gold Medal, a Lambda Literary Awards finalist, an American Booksellers Association Indies Introduce Selection, an Indie Next Pick, a Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers Selection, a Library Reads pick, and finalist for the B&N Discover Prize. She has written for The Atlantic, The Guardian, T: The New York Times Style Magazine, and elsewhere. She teaches in the writing program at Columbia University. Follow her on Instagram.
In this interview, Jaquira discusses writing from a place of communal love with her debut novel, This Is the Only Kingdom, her hopes for readers, and more.
Name: Jaquira Díaz
Literary agent: Michelle Brower at Trellis Literary Management
Book title: This Is the Only Kingdom
Publisher: Algonquin Books / Little, Brown and Company
Release date: October 21, 2025
Genre/category: Literary Fiction / Popular Fiction
Previous titles: Ordinary Girls: A Memoir
Elevator pitch: Set in Puerto Rico and Miami Beach, This Is the Only Kingdom is a novel of a family wrestling with the aftermath of a murder, an exploration of generational grief and the legacy of colonialism. A multi-generational novel told from the perspective of shifting protagonists, it confronts systemic poverty, racism, addiction, and LGBTQ coming of age: the story of Nena, a teenager haunted by loss and betrayal and exploring her sexual identity, who must learn to fight for herself and her family in a world not always welcoming; and her mother, Maricarmen, who struggles to make a home for herself and her family, until one fateful day changes everything.
What prompted you to write this book?
This Is the Only Kingdom is a project that came out of love—for the community where I learned all about storytelling, for the ways we tell stories, make music, raise families, work, take care of each other, and dream. But also, out of a deep respect for the ways we allow each other (and ourselves) to fail, to fail and fail again, and get back up and keep trying. For the ways we are not always our best selves, the ways we are flawed and complicated, and yet we continue to love each other and the place we call home.
How long did it take to go from idea to publication? And did the idea change during the process?
This Is the Only Kingdom took six years to write. It honestly feels like it’s the story I’ve been writing my whole life. I’ve been thinking about Rey (one of the major characters) since I was a child growing up in Puerto Rico, when the story was passed down by my father.
Out of that small part, the novel grew. Over the last six years, the characters evolved, took on lives of their own. I was very interested in characters that were flawed, who were not villains or heroes, who were imperfect in the ways they lived and loved. I wanted to capture something human, something about the ways we are capable of both cruelty and compassion, of loving and hurting each other in ways large and small.
Were there any surprises or learning moments in the publishing process for this title?
This is my novel debut, but since I had already published a memoir, I was prepared.
Were there any surprises in the writing process for this book?
Most surprising is how much the story grew out of that one small piece that was passed down. I created a fictional family, and it seemed that the characters were each demanding their own story, a life of their own. But it came to me in bits and pieces, so at times it seemed I was making a kind of collage rather than a chronological, multi-generational story, which is what it turned out to be. When I sent off the first completed draft of the manuscript to Kathy Pories, my editor at Algonquin, it was an unwieldy fractured mess. It was a labor of love, and I’m proud of what it turned out to be.
What do you hope readers will get out of your book?
This Is the Only Kingdom is a novel about a family during the aftermath of a murder, but it is also about so many other things: about music and labor and community, about how Queer folks make our own families despite how much we are forced to endure, and about the history of my hometown in Puerto Rico. It’s about forgiveness and redemption, about love and family estrangement, and about mothers and daughters.
If you could share one piece of advice with other writers, what would it be?
Remember why you love books, how you became a reader in the first place. Write what you love, not what you think the market is looking for. Remember that you’re making art, not a product. What would you write if there was absolutely no money in it? And finally, read. Read widely and diversely, everything you can get your hands on. Surprise yourself. Challenge yourself. All these things will make you a better writer.
