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

I'm Teppur Treesman, fiction editor at The New Yorker.

On this episode of The Writer's Voice, we'll hear Brian Washington read his story Foster

from the June 14th, 2021 issue of the magazine.

Washington is a winner of the Ernest J. Gaines Award, the International Dylan Thomas Prize,

and the Lambda Literary Award.

His story collection lot was published in 2019, and his novel Memorial came out in 2020.

Now here's Brian Washington.

Foster

He isn't any kind of cat that I've ever seen.

The pause looked like something out of a storybook, and his first shines in IKEA Back Blue.

Some googling tells me this means he is a short hair, maybe.

But my older brother's letter just called him a stray.

You have that in common, my brother wrote.

It'll give you two something to talk about, he wrote.

So that's what I think of him as.

A fucking stray.

A woman I can't responsibly call my brother's girlfriend dropped the cat off at my apartment

in Montrose.

He had a truly tossed him on the sidewalk.

She didn't wait for me to stumble outside before she drove off.

There was a crumpled note, along with a food dispenser, and then this cat in his box.

...