Amelia Island, Florida, invites you to breathe a little deeper and enjoy the luxury of letting go.

Discover the tranquil seaside getaway embraced by salt air, sunshine, and authentic southern charm.

Find your unwind at amelia Island.com.

Music amelia island.com. 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 Catherine Lacey read her story, Rate Your Happiness, from the April 13th, 2026 issue of the magazine.

Lacey is the author of five books of fiction, including the novel's Pew and Biography of X, which was shortlisted for the Dylan Thomas Prize in 2024.

A memoir and novella, The Mobius Book, was published last year.

Now here's Catherine Lacey.

Rate Your Happiness. For a few moments, Rate your happiness

For a few moments, Louise had been sure that she was dying, that a valve or vein in her body had gotten clogged or burst,

and she was going to expire right there in the back of the plane, pathetic and dehydrated,

traveling alone, hurtling through

the air somewhere high above the Midwest. And during those queasy moments that seemed to be her last,

Louise didn't think of her parents who would survive her, and she didn't think of her brother in

Montana with his ranch and several children, or of her sister in Miami,

and she didn't even think of her plentiful, minor, and major regrets. Instead, Louise thought

of her small, dark apartment back in Manhattan, how dirty it was right now, how full of

humiliating artifacts, like that brochure from a skin rejuvenation

clinic she'd hidden in the bathroom, and the several warren romance novel stowed under the bed,

and the fridge full of decaying takeout in styrofoam clamshells, as she'd been going through a tough

time, a long tough time, and Louise thought of the situation

...