Masterclass on prose style from Eskor David Johnson, shortlisted for the First Novel Prize

Part 1 of our in-depth piece from the author of Pay As You Go

Eskor David Johnson is a writer from Trinidad and Tobago and the United States. His writing has appeared in BOMB Magazine, and McSweeney's Quarterly Concern. A graduate of Harvard University and the Iowa Writers' Workshop, where he was the recipient of the Richard Yates Short Story Prize, the Maytag Fellowship and the Teaching-Writing Fellowship, he currently lives in New York City.

We chose his debut Pay As You Go as the best-written book on the shortlist for the Centre for Fiction’s First Novel Prize, the winner of which will be announced on 5th December. Read an extended extract here.

Below we present Part 1 of Johnson’s unique in-depth discussion of various aspects of prose style. We have similar interviews on style coming up this month from:

Anna Della Subin, whose Accidental Gods has been named a Book of the Year 2023 in The TLS, Esquire, The Telegraph, and the Irish Times, and an Editors’ Choice in The New York Times.

Lavie Tidhar, whose The Circumference of the World has been cho…