Phillippe Diederich is the son of Haitian exiles, born in the Dominican Republic and raised in Mexico City and Miami. Diederich’s writing often explores themes of identity, belonging, and cultural heritage from a multicultural perspective.

His novels include “Lalo Lespérance Never Forgot” (Dutton, 2023); “Diamond Park” (Dutton, 2022); “Playing for the Devil’s Fire” (Cinco Puntos Press, 2016), which was named the 2017 Best Young Adult novel by the Texas Institute of Letters and selected for the 2017 Young Adult Library Services Association Best Fiction for Young Adults; and “Sofrito” (Cinco Puntos Press, 2015).

Diederich’s short fiction has appeared in Quarterly West, Acentos Review, Burrow Press, Hobart, and other literary journals. His writing has been awarded the PEN/Phyllis Naylor Working Writer Fellowship, the Chris O’Malley Prize for Fiction from the Madison Review, an Elizabeth George Foundation Grant, a Florida Individual Artist Fellowship in Literature, and a John Ringling Towers Grant in Literature.

Phillippe Diederich’s photography remains a central part of his professional life, though it has evolved since his days as a photojournalist covering news and features across the U.S. and Latin America for national publications. Today, Diederich creates visual content for businesses and individuals, specializing in travel, food, and lifestyle photography and video content that enhances websites and social media platforms, delivering compelling visual narratives for clients.

Diederich explains that “Something I find interesting about all this is that my years of experience as a visual storyteller finds a way to filter itself into my writing style, giving my novels a natural cinematic feel.”