Q&A with 7 Writers Featured in the PEN America Best Debut Short Stories Anthology of 2021
We asked 7 writers who were featured in this year’s PEN America Best Debut Short Stories Anthology questions about their work, their process and the art of the short story.
Can you tell us about yourself as a writer? What are some interests or themes that inspire your work?
Pardeep Toor: My writing aims to explore issues of identity, race, language, and assimilation in the context of a blue-collar South Asian family. I emphasize blue-collar because that's my own story. My parents never attended college. My dad never even finished high school. Instead, they went straight from a small agricultural village in Punjab, India to working factory jobs in the suburbs of Toronto. The inspirational elements of their immigrant story is embedded with traumas that are often neglected in the wake of achieving some semblance of middle class stability. Yes, a lot is gained in immigrant journeys, but I'm equally interested in what was forever lost. My writing also reveals the complex intra-racial challenges within South Asian populations. There are deeply embedded issues of prejudice and racism within Indian communities that are then outwardly projected to other populations. It's really nasty stuff that I feel needs to be first exposed so it can then be discussed and hopefully remedied.
Khaddafina Mbabazi: The answer to this question seems to change every couple of years. But for now, I’m mostly interested in the daily weather of women’s lives. Sometimes this weather consists of the interior forces of the day-to-day – the distinct and often fraught intimacies between people for instance – and sometimes it consists of larger forces of history: colonialism, postcolonialism etc. These women are African, more specifically, they are East African. To be even more exact, they are Ugandan, and I am as well – but to me being a Ugandan is simply a way of being African. So, I’m an African writer, writing about Black African women. Beyond that, as a writer, I’ve of course been shaped by a plenitude of things: a fairly itinerant childhood, my training as a jazz musician, my training as a classical musician, my literary sensibilities, my love of art and history, my interest in theology and a lot else.
Heather Aruffo: I have a pretty multicultural, immigrant background- my Dad was born and raised in Mexico to Italian parents of Russian descent, and I've lived in the UK, Switzerland and Mongolia. I grew up hearing a lot of stories about Mexico, World War II and the Russian Revolution, so I definitely feel a sense of precarity about the world and have a great respect for its interconnectedness. I have a chemistry background and I'm a medical writer at a biotech company in my day job, so I'm always thinking about science and the role it plays in the world. Questions of capitalism, nationalism, science, empire and history show up in my work all the time. Almost regardless of genre, I'm always thinking about those themes, unless I'm writing straight up literary realism, where my concerns get a little more domestic. I'm happiest when my fiction and essays feel like they're speaking to greater global themes through the lens of smaller, interpersonal concerns and emotions. Force, Mass, Acceleration really embodies all of those concerns and obsessions in my work and is pretty representative of what I hope my work can be.
Isaac Hughes Green: My writing is informed by my lived experience as a Black person in predominantly white neighborhoods, schools, and workplaces. It is also informed by my experience documenting activist groups and paying close attention to politics both at the local level in North Carolina and at the national level. I often find myself feeling like a fish out of water because the circumstances of my upbringing were unique. I come from a long line of leaders in the Black community but grew up much farther away from it than previous generations because of my parents' financial success and the fact that by the time I was born, integration had already taken place. My characters often share this feeling of displacement and it leads them into interesting and complex situations.
Mackenzie Peery: Most of my work is speculative in nature, formally experimental, or both. I crave newness when I sit down to write; I want to feel like I’m making something that hasn’t been made before. The themes I gravitate towards are gender dynamics, power dynamics, and pop culture, often tinged with a level of absurdity. Even if the ideas are grim, I want to delight in the process of writing. I think that when I have fun, the reader has fun, too.
In terms of process, I think I write from a top-down approach. I’ll get interested in a larger question, like the feminine experience, the male gaze, or something like that. I couple those bigger ideas with a concrete image or character, and that gets me into the space where I can start crafting a narrative. I find that I tend to “marinate” my stories for a while—sometimes weeks, sometimes months—before I actually start putting words on the page. Once that idea has “cooked” for long enough, I know why I’m interested in it, and I have a sense of what place the story has in the world, then I can get to work.
Lindsay Ferguson: I think who I am as a writer is definitely informed by who I am as a reader. I love a complex character who maybe isn’t entirely likable or well-behaved. I like when strange and surreal things happen; when there’s something just a touch off-kilter in an otherwise normal world. And I like to feel a little emotionally devastated at the end of it all...it’s a good thing when I have to set down a book or nearly throw it across the room because my emotional or gut response is so strong! These are all elements that I hope to be able to bring to my own writing, which tends to be pretty voice- and character-driven.
For me, writing is an opportunity to explore ideas and concepts that I can’t stop thinking about. I primarily write flash and short stories, and I’m currently having a lot of fun playing around with different narrative structures and forms. Even when I write something that’s completely fictional, like “Good Girls,” there’s usually an emotional element that I’ve drawn from my own experience present somewhere. That said, I like to write stories that explore shifting relationship dynamics, or characters on the brink of change or facing hard decisions. I’m interested in the tensions that happen when we’re forced to face those things. As a Black woman, I’m particularly invested in telling stories that center us and add to the wide spectrum of writing about our lives and experiences. There are a lot of contemporary Black authors doing this right now in their own work and it’s incredibly inspiring.
Amy Haejung: As a writer, I am interested in stories that grapple with memory and its instability, and that decenter and critique the idea of truth. My current writing projects seem to revolve around desire, loss, magic, and the limits of what can be said.
What was the initial spark of this story? What was the process behind it?
Pardeep Toor: Driving-based work has been a tradition in my family. My dad's second job was delivering pizza five nights a week for Tony's and Jim's, a local pizzeria in Brampton, ON. One of my uncles was a taxi driver, truck driver, and driving school instructor. Then there was a collection of other Indian "uncles" that drove limousines at Pearson International Airport in Toronto. This story aimed to explore the mundanity of these professions through the lens of a taxi driver. I wanted the story to take place over one fare, or one ride gone wrong, and it had to include my childhood experience of discovering a "sex book" (for lack of a better phrase) in my uncle's glove compartment. I carried that memory with me for decades and was determined to get it in a story. That's all I started with. The rest developed over many drafts and revisions.
Mathapelo Mofokeng: I wrote ‘The Strong-Strong Winds’ in response to a themed open call on climate change stories by adda magazine. During that time I was working for a non-profitable organisation doing extensive research on the fragility of Africans in the face of climate change. Of course, the crisis awaiting us will make our lives unrecognisable in very big ways, but for the short story, I was interested in exploring how climate change could disrupt our rituals.
The story was my first attempt at writing prose, so there was no process or method behind writing it. I didn’t know the rules of the craft which led to me constructing a story outside of traditional prose. I would have an idea and see where the thought led me – sentence by sentence. It involved getting creatively lost a lot, but I felt confident that I would find my way. The journey was fluid, dynamic, and full of surprises.
Khaddafina Mbabazi: The initial spark was another story: one a friend of mine told me about an encounter she’d had with a white woman in an airport, both on their way to a country in southern Africa. That encounter remained with me, resurfacing a great deal over the years, because even though it was passingly dull, something in the behaviour of this white woman felt unwarrantedly hostile. So that was the story’s genesis.
In terms of the writing – it was surprisingly slow. It took me six months to have a full first draft. This is quite unusual for me – it typically takes me between a couple of days and two weeks to start and finish a story, and drafting is almost always this fast, propulsive thing. With this one, it felt like I was hunting something in camouflage down. It took ages and was slightly excruciating, but my reward was that I didn’t have to revise it too much.
Heather Aruffo: I actually came to this story through a wikipedia rabbit hole. I started writing it in the fall of 2017, when some of the trials for those involved in the Balkan Wars were taking place. I remembered being fascinated with Ana's story when I read it. Having tried to go to medical school myself, I felt as though I could relate to some of the struggles she faced in her day to day life both studying medicine and as a woman in a male dominated field, outside of the incredible pressure and trauma she must have experienced living through the Balkan Wars. I was on my way home from winter break my second year of graduate school and I was watching TV in the Seattle airport and Slobodan Praljak ( a Croatian war criminal) had killed himself after he was found guilty of war crimes. I remembered Ana's story and I started writing. I wrote most of the medical school scenes in a notebook during that flight. Then I had to go back and create a coherent plot arc around Ana's life and emotional development. I probably read 2 or 3 books on Yugoslav history and the Balkan Wars so that I could understand the historical context and accurately represent it in the piece without allowing the history to overpower the story. I had to go back and change almost everything I'd written because the history was wrong in my first few drafts. It was a good lesson in how to do research. The medical aspects were a lot easier for me- I was an EMT and a volunteer Spanish-English ER translator while I was in college and had watched an autopsy before- so the medical school, ER and cadaver lab scenes came pretty naturally. I originally saw the piece as nonfiction, and I submitted it to journals that way. Sacha Idell at the Southern Review asked me to change the genre to fiction before it was accepted, since so many parts of the piece are imagined or hard to verify. I said yes.
Isaac Hughes Green: The initial spark of this story came in a linguistics class that I took with Dr. Walt Wolfram. Something about studying the way words evolved over time like “napron” becoming “apron” because it was spoken after the word “a” which became confused with “an” made me think about what word had been most powerful over the course of my life and how it had evolved. While I may have chosen a word like “love” because I’ve been shown a lot of that from family and friends over the years, I chose the one that created the most visceral reaction in me which happened to be “nigga/er”.
The writing process happened pretty quickly because I was in graduate school and didn’t like to mix schoolwork with writing. I only wrote on the weekends or during breaks from school. While I thought about what I was going to write for a couple of months and even pitched the idea to my friend Jesse which helped me remember the specifics about the day I used the word for the first time, this story was written over the course of about a week during my fall break of my first semester in the NCSU MFA program. I listened to Flying Lotus, had a few drinks, and ate pistachios while I typed.
Mackenzie Peery: I’ve always loved Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. I first read it in elementary school, which was probably too young, but I had read all of the Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark books, so I thought it was time to kick it up a notch. The loneliness of the monster, his cursed existence that just can’t end well, was one of my first encounters with true horror, and it stuck with me. I carried that idea with me for a long time before I thought of writing an epistolary story with emails. I had so much fun figuring out how to craft subject headings, email signatures, that sort of thing. Then came the all-important question, “Why does this story need to exist? Who is it for?” And the natural answer was something I’d been thinking about at the time: people who have been failed by the healthcare system, not because nobody can help them, but because their needs are undervalued. The story turns on the POV character, Sean, exhibiting a high level of self-centeredness. It’s not that he’s a terrible guy—he’s just never been forced to seriously consider female pain, because society doesn’t place as much value in it.
After I figured all these things out, it was a fairly speedy process. I had a premise, an atmosphere, characters, and big ideas to explore. I think it took me about two sittings to finish the first draft.
Lindsay Ferguson: This story started in a flash fiction workshop I took a couple of years ago. I’d been wanting to write a story about friendship for a while. So even though in my story, the relationship between the two characters embodies a space that is both romantic and platonic, it started with my interest in exploring the intimacy of friendship. The topic is something I think about a lot. In my own life, my friendships with other women have been some of my most meaningful and valued relationships — and they can be both magical when connections are strong and cut deep when there’s misalignment. As for the process of writing the story itself, it came together in just a couple of hours…which is unusual for me because I’m a fairly slow writer! Having a workshop deadline definitely helped, but I think writing this piece was so fluid because I had a clear picture of both characters and the story I wanted to tell. The form in which it took shape — one long sentence, weaving in and out of the past and present — was unplanned, but seemed to fit the flow of the story.
Amy Haejung: Before writing this story, I was mostly a poet. I drafted “Maria” while I was experimenting with prose and narrative to see whether I could write a short story at all. I began with an entirely different premise, but once I came to the image of the moon disappearing, the story started to take form and meaning for me.
Did you always want to be a writer? Can you tell us a little about your background?
Pardeep Toor: I've always been writing in some capacity, whether it be personally or professionally. I was raised on the narratives of sports, professional wrestling, novels, video games, and the endless worlds I built with my action figures (or "Little Men" as my friends and I used to call them in elementary school). Whether it was Link's mission to save Hyrule, Ender's sympathy for the Buggers, or Bret Hart finally defeating Yokozuna at Wrestlemania -- I digested and experienced the world through the lens of these grand narratives of hope and overcoming insurmountable obstacles. I've always preferred living in fictional worlds than our actual one so it was natural for me to construct my own narratives. Writing is something that I've always done in some form and it's something I'll gladly be doing for the rest of my life.
Mathapelo Mofokeng:After high school, I wasn’t sure which career path I wanted to pursue, and I landed up in film school. I intended to take the scriptwriting course offered but ended up doing my undergraduate degree in production. I worked on the production of various commercials and blockbuster feature films but soon realised that I yearned to do work that generates a positive and meaningful impact.
I moved to a non-profitable organisation that mobilises young people to engage in productive dialogue about the issues they face through radio. I worked there for a couple of years, learning about the world and its complexities. The desire to write screenplays resurfaced and in 2018, I graduated from arts and humanities, London University of Goldsmiths, with an MA in scriptwriting.
Since then I have been slowly, but surely, positioning myself as a versatile writer.
Khaddafina Mbabazi:My first proper foray into writing was at the age of eleven when I began to write my own Harry Potter fanfiction (does this make me an absolute cliché of a millennial?). I’d do this in lieu of my homework because it was more exciting. And yet, writing was a second love. I was (and in some ways still am) a musician first – a singer, who first played the violin. I went on to study music at university, but I disliked performing, and I spent more time writing stories and essays than I did writing lyrics and joining them to melodies (a skill I never quite hacked). Plus the classes I enjoyed most were the literary ones or the ones in which I got to write about the music I loved, dissecting its form, its architecture. I also began to suspect, whilst there, that I was not suited to life on the stage, in never-ending communion with other people: a band, an orchestra, an audience. I’m a solitary person, and I wanted a life that demanded solitude. It took over four years of studying one art form to realise that I was temperamentally suited to another.
Heather Aruffo: I came to writing about halfway through college. I was a premed chemistry major and I started writing a novel over winter break of my junior year. The novel held my interest far more than anything else I’d done before, so I ran with it. I started taking creative writing classes, then I went to get my MFA at the University of Alaska, Fairbanks since they offered me funding. I don’t really consider myself to be a short story writer, I'm more of a novelist and I really enjoy writing essays, but getting this award has certainly encouraged me to write more short fiction and hone my craft. I didn’t always want to be a writer, but I always loved to read. I’m glad I followed my passion and let the writing lead the way, even if it hasn't always been easy road
Isaac Hughes Green: I did not always want to be a writer. Growing up I thought I was going to be in the financial industry like my dad or some kind of engineer. I also held out hope that I might one day become good enough at skateboarding to do that full time but, while I was skilled, I never got to that level. My interest in skateboarding led to my making videos of myself and friends which led to an interest in photography and a position as Art Editor at my high school’s literary magazine Blue Mirror. My senior year I took my first creative writing class and my professor encouraged me to stick with it.
I grew up in Durham, North Carolina and also lived outside of Detroit for a few years. I probably spent too much time on the internet as a child. I was also a skate rat - constantly at the skatepark or the shop or hanging out at the coffee shop with the older skaters who drew in notebooks or played trill music as the days passed by.
Mackenzie Peery: As a sixth grader, I remember crying in my bedroom because I wanted to be a philosopher so badly, but I didn’t think that was something you could do outside of ancient Greece. I would write from time to time as a child, but “writer” seemed like an impossible dream. Every adult I knew had practical jobs and ambitions, but I was a kid with her head in the clouds. I floated around in psychology and liberal arts in college until my now-husband convinced me to take a creative writing class, and I never looked back! Of course, the privileges I had growing up (being financially stable, going to a great public school, having help paying for college) can’t be discounted, and reflecting on these privileges has become a recent focus in my work. A couple of my current projects are concerned with the social power of well-off white women and how it can be used for good and evil.
Lindsay Ferguson: Yes! Writing is one of the earliest things I can remember loving and feeling like I was any good at, so I always gravitated towards anything that had to do with books, reading, or writing. As a student, I participated in a few in-school and summer writing programs as well. Still, as I got older, it didn’t immediately occur to me how to “become a writer.” For instance, I didn’t study creative writing in college — I thought it was something I would always have plenty of time to practice on the side. (Ha!) But I did study journalism, and that allowed me to stay connected to my love of writing, editing, and storytelling.
Since graduating, I’ve worked as a communications specialist, and that’s helped me keep my writing and editing skills sharp. But a few years ago, I realized how much I missed creative writing and how little room I felt I had for it in my everyday life. I also really missed being in a learning environment. So I signed up for my first online workshop, which is primarily where I’ve done my learning and experimenting over the past few years. Unfortunately, workshops are only ever a few weeks at a time, but I get a lot out of being in class with other writers, exchanging feedback, and getting to discuss craft.
Amy Haejung: For years I wanted to be a painter. Eventually I realized I was not very good at painting and started writing poetry, and more recently I’ve moved into fiction, but I think a lot of my visual and thematic concerns from painting have carried over.
What does it mean to you to be a part of this collection?
Pardeep Toor: Being part of this collection has meant a lot to me. I've been writing (or trying to write) for my entire adult life. Some days, weeks, months and years were more productive than others, but I always kept trying. However, writing was always something I did within a very small community. It's not something I openly shared with others because I never felt like a writer or had anything concrete to share. For the first time, this prize made me feel like a writer, like I had a voice in the writing and reading community. I believe that making a writer truly feel like a writer is the greatest gift you can give them and that's the feeling this collection gave me.
Heather Aruffo:It’s been really inspiring to be part of an anthology with such an incredible and talented group of writers. We are all at very different points in our lives, so it’s really nice to talk shop with people who are approaching writing from completely different places and while still taking our work seriously. Getting an award like this and being a part of this community is a huge boost. I think writers go through plenty of ups and downs while doing the work, but this has been an up that has sustained me for quite a while. I remember reading an early version of this story at a distillery in Fairbanks in the fall of 2018 and it's bizarre to think its come this far since then. I try to remind myself that although this may be my first big writing success, it won't be my last.
Isaac Hughes Green: Being a part of this collection has changed my life. It has been an affirmation of the chance I took by enrolling in a creative writing graduate program instead of pursuing an entry level job in filmmaking or some other 9-5. Recently, I was hired to teach writing at North Carolina Central University. I know being a part of this collection had something to do with it and, as I write these words, I am on the verge of what I know is going to be a challenging but rewarding experience of sharing what I know with young people and learning from them along the way.
It has also been meaningful to be a part of the community of writers contained within the pages of this anthology. We are an eclectic and encouraging bunch - spread out across the world and varying in age, gender, and background - but we take time to congratulate one another’s successes and share opportunities with one another. It always makes me smile when I see e-mails come though on our private thread.
Mackenzie Peery: When Porter House Review first published “Re: Frankie,” a stranger reached out on Twitter and told me that my story had touched them. It was the first time anything like that had ever happened to me. I was thrilled! All I really want is for my work to make someone out there feel something, and to know this story has done that is beyond affirming.
There’s also the community aspect. Reading the other stories in the collection, it’s such an honor to be counted among the PEN Twelve this year. Being a literary citizen is one of the great joys of being a writer, and I’m so glad to have met my awesome co-contributors.
Lindsay Ferguson: It’s such an honor to be a part of this collection, and the journey to get here — while totally unexpected — has been really affirming from start to finish. I’m incredibly grateful to Tyrese Coleman who saw something in my piece and selected it to initially be published in Barrelhouse. It was already amazing to have Tyrese read and edit my work...having Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah, Kali Fajardo-Anstine, and Beth Piatote then select it for the PEN America Dau Prize was beyond where I could’ve imagined this piece would go. So it’s been a very encouraging and motivating experience and makes all the hours staring at a blank page feel worthwhile. I’m also really thankful to have met so many kind and talented writers — the other winners — through this experience and am excited to continue learning from them and cheering them on as we all take on new projects.
Amy Haejung: It has been a huge honor to have my story selected by judges I admire so much, and to be anthologized with such brilliant new writers. I’ve felt so welcomed and seen by other writers and readers. I’m so grateful for this experience.
What’s next for you? (future writing goals, or projects)
Mathapelo Mofokeng: My background is in film and radio, so until recently I have developed the craft of writing outside of books.
I think one needs to read a lot, to write prose. So I have now turned to my bookshelves and started studying fiction through the ways that other writers have written.
Working across different media has allowed me to be agile and respond to new opportunities as they arise, but I’ve also found that working in different formats allows for some interesting cross-pollination and adaptations. So I’ll continue working across film, radio and prose.
Heather Aruffo: I’m working on an essay collection right now tentatively titled “Work-Life” about capitalism, globalization, healthcare and Latinx identity through the lens of global science, working in the pharmaceutical industry and creating a work-life as a writer within the constraints of capitalism. I'm planning on starting another novel soon- a near future science fiction set in Alaska with a melting arctic as the backdrop. I'm also writing some realist short fiction set in Alaska, just to keep up the momentum with the form. I'm calling them my "messed up Alaskan loves stories" and they're pretty fun to write, if very different from the rest of my work.
Isaac Hughes Green: I have a drafted novel entitled We’ll Call You. It was my thesis in the NCSU MFA program and details a woman named Teyarah Price who is extorted into running for president through a complex staged murder of her son which is made to look like a racialized slaying. I think that these cases of white men with guns killing unarmed black teens and adults are too common and this book takes that fact and twists it into a story. I hope to find an agent for this and other novels I have drafted and eventually publish.
Mackenzie Peery: I’m always writing short stories (especially when I’m procrastinating on my longer project), and I’m nearing completion on a story collection. Right now my main focus is my MFA thesis, which is a novel called Another Castle. The short story I’m expanding into the novel is forthcoming from Alaska Quarterly Review.
Lindsay Ferguson: I’m working on multiple short stories. Those could potentially come together into a cohesive collection, but I’m really just taking each idea as it comes and prioritizing building my portfolio and submitting to publications. I’m also in the early stages of exploring MFA programs, so we’ll see where that goes as well.
Amy Haejung: I am (very slowly) working on more short stories.
