A Conversation with ‘Best Debut Short Stories 2021’ Author Pardeep Toor

Best Debut Short Stories 2021: The PEN America Dau Prize is the fifth 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 Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah, Kali Fajardo-Anstine, and Beth Piatote. Submissions for the 2022 awards are open now.

Pardeep Toor grew up in Brampton, Ontario, and currently lives in Las Cruces, New Mexico. His writing has appeared in Electric Literature and the Midwest Review and is forthcoming in Great River Review.

“Taxi” was originally published in Midwest Review. Find a brief excerpt from “Taxi” below:

Hans parked the yellow cab in front of a lime green house near the central part of the city, amid the cheaply constructed square municipal buildings. He fumbled with the lever to adjust the seat. He pushed forward, backward, and then forward again until he felt comfortable with the space between his knees and the steering wheel. He put both his hands on the steering wheel and pretended to drive.

Hans didn’t own the cab. He had borrowed it from his friend Kanti. Hans and Kanti had gone to high school together. Kanti’s dad gave him the yellow cab after he dropped out of high school. Hans drove the cab during weekday mornings and afternoons. Kanti preferred nights and weekends when business was best. Kanti left the car in the school parking lot every morning before teachers, secretaries, or anyone who could recognize him arrived. He left the keys under the driver’s seat mat. Hans attended algebra class at nine in the morning, but then skipped English at ten. He didn’t read well enough to understand or discuss the stories in class so he preferred to drive the taxi for an hour every morning. Hans returned to school in the afternoon for gym class.

What was your writing process like for this story?

I had a ton of fun writing this story. My writing process relies heavily on conversations with my partner and sister. I excessively talk out the first draft with them. They are so kind to put up with my annoying tendency to obsess over details and repeat myself for days before the story actually lands on the page. They’re always my first readers as well. Despite their familial biases, they do a phenomenal job helping me shape the story and stretch the boundaries of possibility in fiction. Then, I always solicit feedback from a close circle of writer friends. My writing process is very communal. It’s more fun that way. The (many) failures and (few) successes both become equally enjoyable when you endure them together with your closest circle. It’s really a shame that only one person gets a byline on a story or book because it takes the time, effort, and feedback of so many to finish any piece of writing.

Kanti is a central character to the story, and yet everything we know about him, we learn obliquely, from Hans’s remembering. What is Kanti’s role in the story, and how did you land on this point of view?

I’m so glad you asked about Kanti! He's a reoccurring character in Hans’s stories. He’s a friend, instigator, assimilation agent, and much more. I’ve always written him as a negative moral compass, the character on your shoulder guiding you down a less desirable path. Yet, there’s a dependency between Hans and Kanti, based on their shared Indian-ness and immigrant journeys. In terms of point-of-view, Kanti often appears in scenes in other stories, but in “Taxi,” his presence is exclusively psychological. Kanti’s prevalence in Hans’s thoughts and memories is intended to illuminate his influence on Hans and establish his role as the leader of taxi operations. I aimed to show the infancy of Hans’s immigrant journey as he constantly relies on Kanti for advice, guidance, and even work in the taxi business. This isn’t the last time you’ll hear from Kanti!

The story has extensive dialogue between a mother and son riding in Hans’s cab. What was most challenging about constructing the story this way? What did you enjoy? Do you have any tips for writers struggling with dialogue in fiction?

I grew up in a large Indian family where everyone constantly spoke over each other. There was no time to reflect on or respond to what was said. Conversations moved quickly. You had to be sharp or you’d never get a word in. Unconsciously, I started writing dialogue like that as well. I rely heavily on dialogue in this story and in all my fiction. I feel we learn the most about characters through dialogue, even more than narrative or description. Dialogue lacks authorial injection. It’s one of the few areas where you can forget the hand of the author and truly be the character(s). I feel that dialogue distances myself, the author, from the reader in order to bring the reader as close as possible to the unfiltered character.

My advice to writers struggling with dialogue is to have characters speak with their own agendas rather than exchange actual questions-and-answers. There are few simple back-and-forths in the real world. Most conversations are muddled with people talking over each other, arguments, or opposing priorities. Give the characters their own agenda and have them speak to it.

How has the Robert J. Dau Prize affected you?

This prize 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 prize gave me.

What is the best or worst writing advice you’ve received, and why?

The best advice I've received is to “embrace the labor.” Like any career, task, or pursuit, writing is laborious. You have to show up to work every day. Often you have a bad or uninspiring day at work and that's fine because you get to work again tomorrow. More than creativity or inspiration, I truly believe in the power of practice, consistency, and repetition. It’s more labor than anything else.

Finally, where do you discover new writing?

I lean on my friends, a lot of whom equally enjoy reading and writing. It also gives us a good reason to pick up the phone and give each other a call to discuss the book and catch up in general. I guess this can tie into the advice question: Rely on your friends. It makes reading and everything else more enjoyable.

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