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 invite a writer to choose a story from the

magazine's archives to read and discuss. This month, we're going to hear a small flame by Yi and Lee, which appeared in the New Yorker

in May of 2017.

She spoke English better than anyone.

She had studied with a tutor since she was seven.

Something unheard of among her schoolmates in Beijing in 1985.

What Bella had wanted to play, instead of Red Riding Hood or Cinderella, was the Little Match Girl.

The story was chosen by Brian Washington, who's the author of four books of fiction, including the novel's Family Meal and Palaver, which came out last year and was a finalist for the National Book Award.

Hi Brian.

Hi Deborah. How are you?

I'm fine. Thank you for joining from Tokyo.

Yeah, thank you so much for having me, not this hour.

Yeah, we're at very different hours, but we're making it work.

So, how did you first come to Yi and Lee's writing? I actually first came to it

through the New Yorker to be quite honest. When I was in undergrad, I would spend a lot of time

in the stacks and the university that I attended. They had a pretty extensive backlog of

periodicals and there was an entire section

dedicated to the New Yorker that was separated a little bit innocuously by author. So I was in

a somewhat unique position in that I immediately had access to much of the rest of her work

that she published around that time.

So it was a really useful moment, narratively, of someone who is trying to work out a sense

...