796. Jonathan Escoffery

Otherppl with Brad Listi

Brad Listi

Arts, Society & Culture, Books

4.8 • 554 Ratings

🗓️ 26 October 2022

⏱️ 86 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Jonathan Escoffery is the author of the debut story collection If I Survive You, available from MCD/FSG. If I Survive You is a National Book Award Nominee, an Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence Nominee, a New York Times Editor’s Choice, and an Indie National Bestseller. Escoffery is the winner of The Paris Review’s 2020 Plimpton Prize for Fiction and is the recipient of a 2020 National Endowment for the Arts (Prose) Literature Fellowship. His story “Under the Ackee Tree” was among the trio that won the Paris Review the 2020 ASME Award for Fiction from the American Society of Magazine Editors, and was subsequently included in The Best American Magazine Writing 2020. His stories have appeared in The Paris Review, Oprah Daily, Electric Literature, Zyzzyva, AGNI, Pleiades, American Short Fiction, Prairie Schooner, Passages North, and elsewhere. Jonathan has taught creative writing and seminars on the writer’s life at Stanford University, the University of Minnesota, the Center for Fiction, Tin House, Writers in Progress, and at GrubStreet in Boston, where, as former staff, he founded the Boston Writers of Color Group, which currently has more than 2,000 members. He has received support and honors from Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, the Helene Wurlitzer Foundation of New Mexico, Aspen Words, Kimbilio Fiction, the Anderson Center, and elsewhere. He is a graduate of the University of Minnesota’s Creative Writing MFA Program (Fiction) and attends the University of Southern California’s Ph.D. in Creative Writing and Literature Program as a Provost Fellow. He is a 2021-2023 Wallace Stegner Fellow at Stanford University. *** Otherppl with Brad Listi is a weekly literary podcast featuring in-depth interviews with today's leading writers. Launched in 2011. Books. Literature. Writing. Publishing. Authors. Screenwriters. Etc. Available where podcasts are available: Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, iHeart Radio, etc. Subscribe to Brad Listi’s email newsletter. Support the show on Patreon Merch @otherppl Instagram YouTube Email the show: letters [at] otherppl [dot] com The podcast is a proud affiliate partner of Bookshop, working to support local, independent bookstores. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hello everybody. Hey, what's going on? I'm in Los Angeles. I hope you're doing all right. Where are you right now? What are you doing? I'm very excited about the episode. I've got on the program today, Jonathan Ascoffrey, author of the critically acclaimed
0:27.8	debut story collection entitled If I Survive You.
0:34.7	I was talking about another black artist of his day who essentially said, I don't want to be a black
0:42.5	artist.
0:43.5	I want to be just a really wonderful artist.
0:46.9	And I could relate to that as a younger writer.
0:50.0	It's like when you say black artist, it sounds as though you are limiting your work to,
0:56.7	you know, like a particular bookshelf in the bookstore, in the library, whatever it is.
1:02.5	And it sounds constricted and it sounds limiting and it sounds like, oh, you're only going to talk
1:06.9	about these little things, these little questions of identity. But in reality, he
1:12.4	unpacked that and said, the way to explore your full humanity is to talk about your blackness
1:18.4	and how your black self moves through the world. And that's actually the most expansive thing
1:23.8	you can do. It's not limiting. It's the full reality of your lived experience.
1:30.6	Okay, that was Jonathan Escoffrey, author of the debut story collection, If I Survive You,
1:37.3	Available now from MCDFSG. It's a collection of linked stories. It reads like a novel and it was nominated for the National Book Award and the Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence.
1:53.0	It was also a New York Times editor's choice.
1:57.0	Again it's called If I Survive You, a collection of linked stories set in Miami.
2:04.2	It is about family, race, masculinity, immigration, among other things, and it follows primarily the life of a young man named Trelawney.
2:20.2	Trilani's family is part of the Jamaican diaspora in South Florida and he is trying to sort out his identity,
2:30.2	figure out his place in the world, his place in contemporary America.
2:37.0	It's one of the year's most acclaimed debuts. And I'm so excited to get the chance to introduce you to Jonathan Ascoffrey
2:45.0	and his fine new collection. One more time it's cold if I survive you. That conversation is coming up.
	...

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