This is the New Yorker Fiction Podcast from the New Yorker magazine.

I'm Deborah Treesman, 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 varieties of exile by Mavis Galant, which appeared in the

New Yorker in January of 1976.

I was 19, and for the third time in a year engaged to be married.

When I craved at this point, was not love or romance or a life added to mind, but conversation,

which was parted to find.

The story was chosen by Margaret Atwood, who's the author of more than 40 books of poetry

and fiction, including the novels The Handmaid's Tale and The Testaments, and the story collection

Old Babes in the Wood, which was published earlier this year.

This is the first episode of The New Yorker Fiction Podcast to be recorded in front of

a live audience at the Hot Talks Podcast Festival in Toronto on October 21st, 2023.

Thank you, Margaret, for doing this.

You are a long time admirer of Mavis Galant's work and of herself, and we actually ten

years ago taped a podcast of a different story by Mavis Galant.

How would you sum up what she did in fiction?

Mavis.

Well, first of all, she was a tough old bird, and she was very fond of Graham.

He actually interviewed her quite a long time ago.

He did it for CBC Radio, and I think they got on like a house on fire, because although

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