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 Kevin Barry read his story, Dear Season,

from the October 10th, 2016 issue of the magazine.

Kevin Barry is the author of two story collections and two novels, including last year's Beetlebone.

He's been publishing fiction in The New Yorker since 2010. Now here's Kevin Barry.

Thank you. Dear Season

She saw him often in the morning

and often again around dusk as he walked out by the river.

She called him the riverman.

She had seen him only in the distance

and had not properly distinguished his features.

She was almost 18 and determined to have a fuck before it.

But she lived remotely and the summer was almost over.

He was tall and thin and did not have a pronouncedly masculine walk.

He could not be taken for a farmer. His step was carefully picked out, and

it had a hesitancy to it. It brought to her mind the heron. She needed to get closer to him

quickly. The morning was bright, with a breeze that moved the lights sharp points on the

lanes, and the hedges were opulent with berries, and the high grasses raced in the late summer

fields. She set out for the banks of the river along the lit points of the lanes. She had taken a book for cover after a long think about which book exactly to take.

She pulled her cardigan tight against the morning chill that marked the seasons changing.

Even before the river's sour waft was in her nose, she had decided on the tree that she would sit beneath.

...