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

I'm Deborah 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 a story by James McCourt,

called K. Wayfaring in Avenged.

She whispered, she grasped, she leaked, she plunged again, she became an Avenger.

Our reader this month is Hilton Ells, a staff writer and theater critic for the New Yorker.

Hilton has been contributing to the New Yorkers since 1989,

and this is his second appearance on this program.

Hi, Hilton.

Hello.

So James McCourt published his first novel, Mardu Gorgeous,

about a fictional opera singer in 1975,

and at that time he was championed by a lot of other writers,

including Susan Sontag and Harold Bloom.

And he followed that ten years later with a story collection K. Wayfaring in Avenged,

the title story of which we'll be hearing today.

And he's published four other books, a fiction since then,

including Now Voyagers, a couple of years ago.

How did you first come across his work?

I can't remember exactly how I came across Mardu Gorgeous.

I think it was handed around among a group of gay men who were opera-efficient autos

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