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 Curtis Sittenfeld read her story, show, don't tell,

from the June 5th and 12th, 2017 issue of the magazine.

Sittenfeld has published five novels, including Prep, Sisterland, and Eligible, which came out last year.

Now here's Curtis Sittenfeld.

Show Don't Tell?

At some point, a rich old man named Ryland W. Peasley had made an enormous donation to the program,

and this was why not only the second-year fellowships he'd endowed, but also the people who received them were called Peasley's.

You'd say, he's a Peas or she's a peasly. Each year, four were granted. There were other kinds of fellowships, but none of them

provided as much money, $8,800 as the peaslee's. Plus, with all the others, you still had to teach undergrads.

Our professors and the program administrators were cagey about the exact date

when we'd received the letters specifying our second year funding,

but a rumor was going around that it would be on a Monday in mid-March,

which meant that instead of sitting at my desk,

I spent most of a morning and an early afternoon standing at the front window of my apartment,

scanning the street for the mailman.

For lunch, I ate a bowl of grape nuts and yogurt. Monday nights after seminar were when I

drank the most, and therefore when life seemed the most charged with flirtatious possibility,

so I liked to eat light on those days. Then I brushed my teeth, took a shower, and got dressed.

It was still only two o'clock.

Seminar started at four,

...