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

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

On this episode of The Writer's Voice, we'll hear Ayshegu Savas, read her story Canvas from the June 3rd, 2019 issue of the magazine.

Savas is a Turkish writer who lives in Paris and teaches at the Sorbonne. canvas from the June 3rd, 2019 issue of the magazine.

Savash is a Turkish writer who lives in Paris and teaches at the Sorbonne.

Her first novel, Walking on the Sealing, was published last month.

Now here's Ayshegu Savash.

Canvas.

I heard her upstairs in the studio, in the kitchen, late at night when I was in my room.

Afternoons, there was no sign of her. Some days I thought that she, Agnes, must have left the city,

gone back to the town where her husband lived, perhaps to recover some of her belongings.

She told me she would be staying for only a day or two while she sorted things out, at most a week,

but then I would hear her sounds again around the apartment. There was nothing I could object to,

nothing that interfered with my days. The rent was already so low,

and the arrangement had been that she might use her studio when she was visiting the city.

Besides, it would be useless to look for another place when I had only a few months left to complete my research before I returned to my university in the south. At most a year, if my funding came through.

I'd read about the recent discovery of a pilgrim's letters from the 13th century

during his travels to the country's northern cathedrals.

The pilgrim had described the stone sculptures depicting the day of judgment,

with frankness and sympathy, with

no squeamishness or evasion of their sex, their smooth and fleshy limbs, nor with any hint

of judgment toward the fallen bodies. In my application to extend my fellowship, I explained

...