This is the New Yorker fiction podcast from the New Yorker magazine.

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

Each month we invite a writer to choose a story from the magazine's archives to read and discuss.

This month we're going to hear, haunting Olivia by Karen Russell, which appeared in the New Yorker in June of 2005.

The diabolical goggles were designed for little girls.

They are pink with a floral snorkel attached to the side. They have scratch-proof lenses and an

adjustable band. Wallows says that we're going to use them to find our dead

sister, Olivia.

The story was chosen by Louise Erdrich, who's published more than a dozen books of

fiction, including the novels The Round House, The Rose, and the Night Watchman, which was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in 2021.

A new novel The Mighty Red is coming out in October.

Hi Louise.

Hello, how are you?

I'm all right.

So you chose to read a story by Karen Russell today

and I know that she feels a huge affinity with your work and I'm wondering what kind of affinity you you feel with hers.

I feel an affinity on many levels.

Karen Russell has a genius for language for one thing and she's a delightful writer

but she's also has such a high level of art and coins

appallingly wonderful words. There was so many in this particular story. She'll turn nouns to verbs and she'll also just use

you know your run of the male words and make them entirely new.

That's one of the things I love.

...