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

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

On this week's episode of The Writer's Voice, we'll hear Lillian Fishman read her story,

travesty from the May 12th and 19th, 2025 issue of the writer's voice, we'll hear Lillian Fishman read her story, Travesty,

from the May 12th and 19th, 2025 issue of the magazine.

Fishman is the author of the novel Acts of Service, which was published in 2022.

She is currently at work on her second novel, from which this story was adapted.

Now here's Lillian Fishman.

Travesty.

When the conversation with Ruth finally came, Prima was not shocked.

She'd had a consciousness since that first day in Hamilton Hall of becoming increasingly entangled in the universe,

of her name no longer being the name of an innocent,

of deliberation and responsibility,

of laying down tracks that would determine the direction of decades in her life.

This she relished.

There was a feeling among her classmates of wanting to remain clean, not sexually clean or physically clean, but clean of commitments. The other students wanted

to be well-rounded. They wanted the freedom to choose later on from a variety of paths for

which they had prepared. They wanted to have relationships that would ready them for an eventual mate but would not yet tie them permanently to anyone. They wanted to have relationships that would ready them for an eventual mate,

but would not yet tie them permanently to anyone. They wanted more than anything to maintain their

neutral goodness. They did not want to appear in articles online or in newspapers unless they were

cast in a glowing light. They loved stories of grotesque misbehavior and ruination. They loved these stories because

they felt safe and lucky, and it excited them to live happily in the same world in which other

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