This is The Author's Voice, new fiction from The New Yorker.

I'm Deborah Treesman, fiction editor at The New Yorker.

On this episode of The Author's Voice, we'll hear Karen Russell read her story, The Bog Girl, from the June 20-2016 issue of the magazine.

Russell is the author of two-story collections and the novel Swamplandia.

She was included in the New Yorker's 20 Under 40 issue in 2010, and as a 2013 MacArthur

Fellow.

She published her first story in the magazine in 2005.

Now here's Karen Russell.

The magazine in 2005. Now here's Karen Russell. The Bog Girl. The young turf cutter fell hard for his first girlfriend while operating heavy machinery in the Peatlands.

His name was Killian Edewis. He was 15 years old, and he was illegally employed by Bozardy.

He had celery green eyes and a stutter that had been corrected at the state's expense.

It resurfaced whenever he got nervous.

"'Fu, f, he'd said, accepting the job.

How did Killian persuade Bozardee to hire him?

"'The boy had lyingly laid claim to many qualities,

"'strength, maturity, experience.

"'When that didn't work,

"'he pointed to his bedroom window,

"'a quarter mile away on the misty periphery of the cutaway bog

"'where the undrained water still sparkled between the larch trees.

The intimation was clear,

what the thin, strange boy lacked in muscle power.

...