If I Survive You

Jonathan Escoffery is an American author born to Jamaican parents in the United States. Escoffery grew up in Miami and earned a bachelor’s degree from Florida International University, a master’s in fine arts from the University of Minnesota, and is currently a doctoral candidate at the University of Southern California. He is a recipient of Stanford University’s prestigious Stegner Fellowship, and If I Survive You is his first published book. It was longlisted for the 2022 National Book Award and shortlisted for the 2023 Booker Prize. Escoffery was also awarded a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts in 2020.

Although his writing is not strictly autobiographical, Escoffery sees his novels as a “reflection” of reality, and he draws from his own multinational heritage and experiences growing up as a first-generation Jamaican American in Miami. He is interested in the push-pull experiences of coming of age in both his own immigrant household and in the multicultural space of Miami, where families from all over Latin America and the Caribbean must navigate between their home cultures and the social norms of the United States. He often speaks about how his parents nurtured his academic interests and were avid readers themselves.