This is the New Yorker Fiction Podcast from the New Yorker magazine.

I'm Deborah Treesman, Fiction Editor at the New Yorker.

Each month we ask a current fiction writer to choose a story from the magazine's archive to read and discuss.

This month we'll hear Mavis Galant's story when we were nearly young.

We stood in endless cues together in banks avoiding the bank where Carlos worked

because we were afraid of giggling and embarrassing him.

We shelved peanuts and gossiped and held hands in the blank,

amiable waiting state.

It had become the essence of life.

When we were nearly young was first published in the magazine in 1960.

It was chosen from our archive by Antonia Nelson,

who has been publishing short stories in the New Yorker since the early 90s.

Nelson is the author of three novels and five short story collections,

including her latest entitled Some Fun.

She joins me now from the studios of KMUW in Wichita, Kansas.

Hi, Tony.

Hi, Deborah.

Mavis Galant started publishing fiction in the early 1950s,

and she was a fixture in the New Yorker for decades.

When did you first start reading her work?

I must have read some of her work without paying attention to the name

because the New Yorker was always around our house,

...