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 Jonathan Leatham read his story Narrowing

Valley, which appeared in the October 31st, 2022 issue of the magazine.

Leatham's books of fiction include The Story Collection, Lucky Allen and other stories,

and the novels Motherless Brooklyn, The Feral Detective, and most recently The Arrest,

which was published in 2020.

Now here's Jonathan Leatham.

Narrowing Valley

Wide Load

Mr. Blue Sky

The characters ride into the story aboard in 1976 Winnebago Mini-Winny, one driven breakneck

across broiling asphalt, overspilling its lane on both sides.

Though the story's characters are themselves oblivious, the story acknowledges that it

is being written on stolen Tongva land, indeed the same Tongva land toward which the recreational

vehicle now barrels.

The story gives respect and reverence to those who came before it, which ought to be

absolutely everyone, even you, reader, since the story does not yet and may never exist.

Yet here it seems to come, the story and the recreational vehicle, the Winnebago like a

bread box rumbling westward on fat, half melted tires, a monster's bread box with its bragging

orange stripe, side view mirrors, flying buttress, a full foot from its cab to make it minimally

navigable.

...