Junot Diaz, a Dominican-born writer who grew up in Old Bridge, was named a MacArthur Foundation Fellow, for his writings that center on the Dominican-American experience and are often set in New Jersey.

He is among 23 recipients of this year's MacArthur Foundation "genius grants." Winners of the secretly-awarded prize have no idea they've been nominated for the $500,000 grant until they get a call announcing they've won.

"It left me thinking about my childhood," Diaz, 43, told the Associated Press.

"It would never have dawned on me to think such a thing was possible for me," Diaz said, reflecting on his early years in New Jersey "struggling with poverty, struggling with English.

"I came from a community that was about as hard-working as you can get and yet no one saw or recognized in any way our contributions or our genius. ... I have to wonder, but for circumstances, how many other kids that I came up with are more worthy of this fellowship than me?"

The financial heft of the award, he said, would be freeing. "It's sort of like someone cutting the little leash around your ankle. It gives you an enormous amount of time and room. It really is like -- I told a friend of mine, it's like finding an extra bedroom to your apartment," Diaz told CBS News.

Diaz attended Kean University, and graduated from Rutgers University in 1992; he has spoken of putting himself through school by delivering pool tables. His first publication in 1996, a collection of short stories called "Drown," drew positive attention. One story, "Edison, New Jersey," later became an entry in the popular NPR radio show, "This American Life."

It was more than a decade before Diaz published again, but when he did, his 2007 novel "The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao" was greeted with widespread critical acclaim, and a Pulitzer Prize for fiction. In 2010, Diaz also became the first Latino named to the Pulitzer Prize board of jurors.

Diaz is currently a creative writing professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and lives in Cambridge. His latest work, a second collection of short stories, "This Is How You Lose Her," was published last month by Riverhead Press.

Diaz told New York Magazine in August that he's at work on a second novel, a science-fiction tale about a 14-year-old Dominican girl living in New York, who saves the world from apocalypse.

— The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Related links:

• Junot Diaz speaks at Bergen Community College in Paramus

• Junot Diaz reads an excerpt from "The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao."

• Pulitzer winner Junot Diaz to speak at Rutgers graduation

• Junot Diaz wins Pulitzer Prize for fiction