Von Diaz is an Emmy Award–winning documentarian, a food historian, and the author of Coconuts & Collards: Recipes and Stories from Puerto Rico to the Deep South. Born in Puerto Rico and raised in Atlanta, Georgia, she works at the intersections of food, culture, history, and social justice. She has contributed recipes and essays to several cookbooks and anthologies, including Diana Henry's From the Oven to the Table, Julia Turshen's Feed the Resistance, Charloae Druckman's Women on Food, and Joe Yonan's America: The Great Cookbook, among others. Her work has been featured in the New York Times, the Washington Post, Bon AppéOt, NPR, Food & Wine Magazine, Eater, and Epicurious. She teaches food studies and oral history at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, and she is also an editor and radio producer at StoryCorps, where she produces radio broadcasts for NPR's Morning Edition.