Hi, I'm Lovar Burton and this is Lovar Burton Reads.

In every episode I hand-pick a different piece of short fiction and I read it to you.

The only thing these stories have in common is that I love them and I hope you will too.

Well, you all have picked up on this by now but I genuinely love speculative fiction.

And for me it's not just about being able to envision the distant future.

I love stories like the one I'm going to read today that is only a stone's throw from

where we stand right now.

That's then a generation from now.

It's about a woman who lived through a major time of transition.

And I think that maybe I was drawn to this story because it feels like we ourselves are going

through our own transitional moment globally right now.

We are all living through this mentally cataloging the before, the during and the after of this

pandemic. Now maybe you've considered like I have what you might tell a teenager 20 years from now

if they asked you what it was like in 2019 or 2020, 2021.

So the story that I'm going to read to you today is called Dark Spaces on the Map.

And it's by the author Anjali Satchdevah.

The story was originally published in MIT Review and Anjali has written lots of short fiction

including the award-winning collection, all the names they used for God.

I think I've talked about this collection before.

I love these stories. I also love the name.

I wish I had thought of it.

All the names they used for God.

...