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 Karen Russell read her story, Orange World,

from the June 4th and 11th, 2018 issue of the magazine.

Russell is the author of two short story collections and the novel Swamplandia,

which was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize.

She was included in the New Yorker's 20 Under 40 issue in 2010

and was made a MacArthur Fellow in 2013.

Now here's Karen Russell.

Orange World. Abnormal result. High risk, clinical outcome unknown.

At night, Ray pulls a pillow between her legs and lets the pain scissor at her. She feels like a gut-shot animal lying in the road. Ray was not raised with religion, so when she sees the blood in the toilet, she invents her own prayers.

After the results from the third set of tests come back, she starts begging anything that might be listening to save her baby.

And then, lo, something does answer, I can help you.

It spoke without speaking, glowing low on the horizon.

She had made it over the ledge of 4 a.m. to 5 a.m., which she'd once believed to be a safe

hour, the out-of-the-woods hour. What are you? The voice tipped out of the red light. That's the wrong

question. What would you like me to do?

Orange World, the new parents educator says, is where most of us live. She shows a slide, a smiling baby with a magenta birthmark hooping her eye.

No, a burn mark.

The slides jump back in time to the irreversible error.

Here is the sleepy father, holding a teapot.

Orange World is a nest of tangled electrical cords and open drawers filled with steak

...