A Conversation With PEN America Best Debut Short Stories 2018 Author Elinam Agbo
“I love that our stories are beginning to get the attention they deserve, but that’s not enough for me. I want more.”
“I love that our stories are beginning to get the attention they deserve, but that’s not enough for me. I want more.”
“The idea here is the casual way children can accept and parrot this kind of simple, black-and-white math about worth. So much so that in a pinch they are willing write off their own mother!”
“I thought this exemplified two aspects of the Colombian spirit that interest and delight me: Any festive occasion can become an excuse to start a full-on party; and time is, as a manner of speaking, subjective.”
Raise a glass as the Brooklyn Book Festival kicks off at Pioneer Works on Monday, September 10
“I like melancholy and characters with weighty histories. I fell in love with Daniel. But I fall in love with all my characters.”
“I started thinking about immoral women, women who are not merely complicit counterparts to A Bad Man but active participants in cruelty.”
“When writing this story, I was thinking explicitly about a tendency in players to play games as murderous kleptomaniacs.”
“My focus was on the character and emotions of the immigrant: the loneliness, the sense of loss and disconnection.”