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

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

On this episode of The Writer's Voice, we'll hear Colson Whitehead read his story The Match

from the April 1st, 2019 issue of the magazine.

Whitehead has published six novels, including The Intuitionist and the Underground Railroad,

which won the National Book Award and the Pulitzer Prize.

His new novel, The Nickel Boys, from which this story was adapted,

will be published in July.

Now here's Colson Whitehead.

The Match. The Boys rooted for Griff, even though he was a miserable bully who jimmied and pried at their weaknesses, and made up weaknesses if you couldn't find any, such as Kong, you a

knock-k-k-kneed piece of shit, even if your knees had never knocked your whole life.

He tripped them and laughed at the ensuing Pratt falls and slapped them around when he could get

away with it. He punked them out, dragging them into dark rooms. He smelled like a horse and made fun of their mothers,

which was pretty low given the general motherlessness of the student population. Griff stole the

desserts on multiple occasions, swiped from trays with a grin. Even if the desserts in question

were no great shakes, it was the principal. The boys rooted for Griff

because he was going to represent the colored half of nickel at the annual boxing match.

And no matter what he did the rest of the year, the day of the fight, he would be all of them

in one black body, and he was going to knock the white boy out. If Griff spat teeth before that happened,

swell. The Nicol Academy was a reform school for boys, juvenile offenders, wards of the state,

orphans, runaways who'd lit out to get away from mothers who entertained men for money,

or to escape rummy fathers who came into

...