A Conversation With PEN America Best Debut Short Stories 2019 Author Erin Singer

“Inspiration came from the stupid pencil jar our family had when I was growing up.”

PEN America Best Debut Short Stories 2019 is the third edition of an anthology celebrating outstanding new fiction writers published by literary magazines around the world. In the upcoming weeks, we’ll feature Q&As with the contributors, whose stories were selected for PEN’s Robert J. Dau Short Story Prize for Emerging Writers and for the anthology by judges Danielle Evans, Alice Sola Kim, and Carmen Maria Machado. Submissions for the 2020 awards are open now.

Erin Singer grew up in the Yukon and northwest Saskatchewan. She lives in Las Vegas.

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“Bad Northern Women” was originally published in Conjunctions.

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We are Tockers, descendants of thirty-six feet of long lean Saskatchewan woman: six Tocker sisters, six foot tall, exemplary ax-women all, so says our mom. At the kitchen table this morning we are mixing our Nesquik and Mom is quoting from Taking Our Time: A History of Tockers. As she cites each Tocker triumph she stabs the book with her file, showering its curling cover with fingernail dust. Tocker Trucking! Compass Sawmill! TT’s Laundromat! Stab! Stab! Stab! Mom plants the file in an old baby corn can crammed with white pencil crayons and shards of rulers and dried-out pens. She rubs her eyes until mascara moons arise underneath. Our spoons clack inside our plastic cups.

What was I saying? She sighs. Point being, summer’s coming and no Tocker ever chopped a tree indoors. Get outside and play! Tocker girls brown up good. Just godsakes don’t get a farmer tan.

That right there’s offensive to farmers, Dad says behind his cigarette smoke.

I’m going down for a nap, says Mom. She puts her Kool-Aid glass in the sink.

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Where did you find the idea for this story?

Inspiration came from the stupid pencil jar our family had when I was growing up. It came from memories of being broke in the summer and having nothing to do but wander around town. It came from reading a family history book with a grimace when I found stories—retold with pride—like the one where my ancestor woke in the night to hoof beats thundering through his yard, mounted his horse to alert the Indian Agent, and helped capture men from a nearby reserve who were riding north to Batoche to fight with Louis Riel.

How long did it take you to write this story?

Describing that pencil jar put me in the mood of the story and then the first draft came together pretty quickly—probably under a week. It lingered in my documents until the end of the first semester of my MFA program at the Institute of American Indian Art. I turned it in to my mentor, Ramona Ausubel, who gave me great notes and really encouraged me. After that, I spent several months revising it off and on.

When the Tocker girls’ mother tells her story about the eagle, the animal is powerful, yet it drowns. How do the girls and their mother think about power? Do the daughters think they already have power to some extent, before they leave Tocker Town? Is power considered dangerous?

In the culture in which these women were raised, power is physical strength, fear, money, respect. Power is male. The mom might be able to skin a deer and pay the light bill, but she’s a poor mother of four and that means she eats shit every day. It would never occur to the Tocker sisters that they might be powerful.

There are a couple of moments in this story where the distant future is used, for example: “What we don’t yet identify as homesickness.” Why this point of telling? What do these moments of the distant future provide for the story and your readers’ understanding of the Tocker girls that an otherwise all-present-tense story couldn’t achieve?

The future moments let us know that the sisters will be okay. They have their stories. They can share them with each other. Together they can turn their childhood into something glorious.

Thinking of your title, do the Tocker girls actually believe themselves to be ‘bad’? Do they have a choice?

Following their mom’s advice is too risky. They want to be nice girls with fresh batteries in their remote, socks without holes in the heel, Fruit Roll-Ups in the cupboard, parents who aren’t embarrassing. Also, a super deadly truck. But if you don’t have those things, you’re left to chest thump about what you’ve got.

Can you articulate the relationship between being wanted and the feeling of power/powerlessness that’s at work in “Bad Northern Women”?

No matter how hard their mother works, no matter how important she thinks her family name is, no matter how many bad bitch stories she tells her daughters, the girls see that their father just has to stroll in the door and he has more power.

How has the Robert J. Dau Prize affected you?

When family and friends ask how my writing is going, I assume they’re picturing me wearing a beret and smoking a Virginia Slim while I scribble moody poems in my journal. But since winning, when people inquire I am able to tell them, “I’m doing great! I just won an award!” Which is to say, the Robert J. Dau Prize gave me confidence. If writers as cool as Carmen Maria Machado, Danielle Evans, and Alice Sola Kim liked my story, maybe I’m not wasting my time. Maybe I’m a real writer.

What are you working on now?

I’m writing a novel.

Finally, where do you discover new writing?

I check in with what IAIA people are doing, seek out stories friends are publishing, follow links from writers on Twitter, check in with the literary journals and websites.