About

Jonathan Escoffery is the author of If I Survive You, a New York Times and Booklist Editor’s Choice, an IndieNext Pick, and an International Bestseller. If I Survive You was nominated for more than a dozen prizes and awards internationally, including the National Book Award, the PEN/Jean Stein Book Award, the PEN/ Robert W. Bingham Prize, the Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence, the Aspen Words Literary Prize, and the Story Prize, and was a finalist for the Booker Prize, the PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction, the National Book Critics Circle’s John Leonard Prize, and the Southern Book Prize. It was named a ‘best’ book of 2022 by NPR, The New Yorker, Entertainment Weekly, People, TIME, Oprah Daily, L.A. Times, The Boston Globe, The Philadelphia Inquirer, Vox, Kirkus, BookPage, Real Simple, Literary Hub, and elsewhere.

In North America, If I Survive You is published by MCDxFSG (U.S.) and McClelland and Stewart (Canada). It is published in the UK and Commonwealth by 4th Estate Books, and is published in translation in Germany by Piper Verlag. It will be published in translation in France by Albin Michel (May, 2024), in Turkey by Livera Yayınevi, and in Spain by Alianza.

If I Survive You received American Short Fiction‘s 2023 Constellation Award for a Story Collection and was named Miami New Times’ 2023 Best Book by a Local Author. Jonathan is the winner of The Paris Review’s 2020 Plimpton Prize for Fiction and received a 2020 National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship. His story “Under the Ackee Tree” was among the trio that won the Paris Review the 2020 ASME Award for Fiction from the American Society of Magazine Editors, and was subsequently included in The Best American Magazine Writing 2020. His writing has appeared in The New York Times, The Paris Review, Oprah Daily, Electric Literature, Zyzzyva, American Short Fiction, and elsewhere.

Jonathan has taught creative writing at Stanford University, Warren Wilson, Randolph College, the University of Minnesota, the Center for Fiction, Tin House, The Work Room, and at GrubStreet in Boston, where, as former staff, he founded the Boston Writers of Color Group, which currently has more than 2,000 members. He has received support and honors from Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, the Helene Wurlitzer Foundation of New Mexico, Aspen Words, Kimbilio Fiction, the Anderson Center, and elsewhere. He is a graduate of the University of Minnesota’s Creative Writing MFA Program (Fiction) and attends the University of Southern California’s Ph.D. in Creative Writing and Literature Program as a Provost Fellow. He was a 2021-2023 Wallace Stegner Fellow at Stanford University.