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This is the writer's Voice, new fiction from The New Yorker.

I'm Deborah Treasman, fiction editor at The New Yorker.

On this episode of The Writer's Voice, we'll hear Addie Kitchens read her story, The City is a graveyard from the March 16th, 2026 issue of the magazine.

Kitchens is a Mississippi Delta-born, New Orleans-based,

writer of fiction and nonfiction.

Her first novel, Dominion, was published in 2025,

and was long listed for the Penn Faulkner Award for Fiction

and the Center for Fiction's first novel prize.

Now here's Addie Kitchens.

The city is a graveyard.

It is late August at the time of day when the air in New Orleans is heavy, hard to take in, and harder to let out.

You press through your jog, feeling as though there is a cloud in your chest.

You run to clear your mind and to keep your paramedipausal ass from sagging to the backs of your knees, not that you feel it's effective for either purpose. By weaving around the tourists on Decatur and into an alley,

you are able to find a bit of relief from the heat and the crowd. A melody floats from Jackson Square,

halting you in your tracks.

You know the song, but hindered by the urgency of the guitar and the singer's complicated arrangement,

you struggle to name it.

Then you are hit by another song, booming from a new performer, and accompanied by the sound of his shopping cart rattling over the

cobblestone street. You take the time to contemplate this tune as well, and as you do so,

...