A Conversation With PEN America Best Debut Short Stories 2019 Author JP Infante

“When you’re a kid you’re not sure if you don’t know something because you haven’t been taught it or because you’re not supposed to know.”

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.

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JP Infante is a teacher and writer who curates and hosts arts and culture events. He has taught creative writing at the City University of New York’s Lehman College and writing workshops throughout New York City. He holds an MFA in fiction from the New School. Through the “JP Infante in Conversation” series, he hosts talks with poets and writers. He is a contributing editor for Dominican Writers.

His fiction, nonfiction, and poetry can be found in Kweli Journal, The Poetry Project, Uptown Collective, Dominican Writers, POST(blank) magazine, The Manhattan Times, and other publications. His writing has won the Bernard L. Einbond Memorial Prize, the Aaron Hochberg Family Award, DTM magazine’s “Latino Identity in the U.S.” essay contest, and other awards.

“Without a Big One” was originally published in Kweli Journal.

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You’ve thought about jumping.


It’s a cold winter night. You sit next to Queeny on your fire escape. The cars on the freeway come and go like waves. The lights from the George Washington Bridge reflect off the Hudson River like the shine in glassy eyes. The river is a giant bathtub without a ship or boat to save anyone who might be drowning.

Your babysitter, Nilda, says suicide is like killing someone, and if you were to survive jumping off the fire escape, the police would arrest you for attempted murder. If you do try killing yourself, you plan to live through it because suicide only works if you survive. Nilda laughed when you told her the attempt is meant to get people’s attention. She laughed because it’s true.

You feel the cold wind. Look at the buildings across the river in New Jersey. They are far apart with too much space in between. There’s no space between you and Queeny because you both need the warmth.

They used to call you Minene, and, before that, Chungo, even though your birth certificate says another name. Your stepfather, who’s been away at school for three months, calls you son. Son, get me the TV controller. Son, listen to your mother. Son, stop talking about your heart.

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Where did you find the idea for this story?

The story of a boy being told his incarcerated stepfather is away at school has always been in the back of my head. It’s a common story where I’m from. But it was not until I read School Days by Patrick Chamoiseau and The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night Time by Mark Haddon that I saw flashes of an actual voice and narrative take form. Although “Without a Big One” is not YA, the first draft was an assignment from a course on the YA Novel at Lehman College taught by Terrence Cheng—a major influence in my writing and overall development as a writer.

How long did it take you to write this story?

The first draft took about two days. The revision took years. I wrote the rough draft in 2007 and it was not until 2011 that I stopped making any major changes to the story.

What does second-person allow this story to do that first or third could not? Did you deliberate over the point of view choice, or did second person come naturally to this narrative?

I knew in order for readers to get lost in the story they had to believe they were in a nine or ten-year-old boy’s world.

The second-person affords a fluidity that if used correctly can come off as demands or instructions and at the same time as a reminder of an experience you once had. The second-person also asks the reader to play along, wink-wink, you are the one experiencing these adults as mysterious and powerful.

I never considered the first-person. The first-person can feel too “certain” at times. There is this autonomy in the “I” that would’ve taken away from the power these adults have over Raymond.

The third person gave me too much power as a writer. My own voice—JP Infante’s voice—would overbear the narrator’s sense of the world, which would’ve taken away from the world/atmosphere I was trying to create.

The narrator’s age allows for these wonderful moments of deep honesty: “Did Juan’s mother try to suicide herself?,” as well as comic relief—understanding patronize as paternize. How did you develop the vocabulary for Ray Ray?

School Days by Patrick Chamoiseau informed how I tackled Raymond’s relationship with language.

Also, as a kid, I remember the world being huge and adults being wise and powerful giants. In the same way the physical world looked enormous, language also felt greater and heavier. The blend of ignorance and imagination amplified the meaning of events, silences between adults and words. When you’re a kid you’re not sure if you don’t know something because you haven’t been taught it or because you’re not supposed to know.

In the course of this story, a number of reader expectations are subverted in a surprising way. For example, Ray Ray decides to trust Nino at the end rather than Nilda, and we find out that Nilda is not just a friendly neighborhood babysitter, but, in fact, she works for Children’s Services. How do you think of expectations and subverting those expectations in your fiction? What impact do you hope these surprises have for this story, and your readers?

Any turn of events or character choices that subvert readers’ expectations are usually the result of being in the “zone” while writing. I binge write my first drafts. I write for hours, sometimes whole days on the same piece with few breaks. So I get lost in the creative freedom the first draft provides. This is when characters’ motivations take over and if I stay true to their wants and fears they always make interesting choices.

At the end of the day, surprises or subverting the reader’s expectations results in fun for the reader. It deepens their engagement, making whatever you’re trying to pull off as a writer easier. It can also lead to a rereading of the story. It’s fun to reread and find that even though a particular moment is surprising it’s not out of character or out of place in the world.

How has the Robert J. Dau Prize affected you?

The money helped pay the rent and nothing is doper than that. To get a significant sum of paper for some shit you wrote is wonderful.

The exposure has been amazing. A certain prestige is associated with the recognition, so a few writers whose work I admire have reached out and congratulated me. The prize has also led people to the Kweli website where the story is published.

Allowing others’ reaction is dangerous because once you get caught up in the hype you start working for it. But I can’t front, it’s affirming.

What are you working on now?

I’m always working on my novel, but that’s an ongoing burden. This summer if I wasn’t working on “write-ups” for local newspapers or revising completed poems and prose for submission, I was working on this new short story I’m trying to submit by October.

Finally, where do you discover new writing?

Noon (Literary Annual) is always fun to read.

The Aster(ix) Journal: a journal of literature, art, criticism puts out dope work.

Digging Through the Fat: A Literary & Arts Journal for Cultural Omnivores has introduced me to writers.

I’m also seeing a lot of great new writing on Instagram. I discovered Yahdon Israel’s “micro-essays,” captions on his images, on Instagram. I also discovered Elisabet Velasquez and Danyeli Rodrgiuez’s poetry there.