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

I'm Debra 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 stuff by Joy Williams, which was published in The New Yorker in July of 2016.

He suddenly felt that he could make anything appear in this room, anything he wanted.

His father's rack of pipes, the bird's nest he had destroyed on a dare, anything, his old dog breathing heavily in dream.

This was a magic place.

The story was chosen by Colin Barrett, whose debut story collection, Young Skins, won the Franco-Conner International Short Story Award,

and the Guardian First Book Award in 2014.

Hi, Colin.

Hi, Debra.

You know, when I first asked you to come on the podcast, it didn't occur to me that you would choose a story by Joy Williams.

Her work on a superficial level, anyway, seems that a far removed from yours.

What is it that most excites you about her writing?

Gosh, I mean, I kind of only really encountered Joy Williams' work.

Probably only like three or four years ago, I really began reading her consistently.

I was based in Ireland up until last year.

I don't think any of her collections were ever published in the UK, you know?

So she wasn't widely known, even in part from a few short story connoisseurs,

those several hundred of us that exist in Ireland.

Well, in Ireland there's probably several tens of thousands of them,

but obviously she's wouldn't be known by even pretty well-read, the casual reader.

...