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 Margaret Atwood,

read her story, old babes in the wood, from the April 26th and May 3rd 2021 issue of the magazine.

Atwood has published more than two dozen books of fiction,

including the story collection Stone Matters,

and the novels The Handmaid's Tale, and the Testaments,

which won the Booker Prize in 2019.

Now here's Margaret Atwood.

Old babes in the wood.

Pants or dead leaves, Lizzie says.

My guess is Pants, now it says.

The two of them stand on the dock in their age inappropriate bathing suits

and stare at the dark patch under the water.

An hour earlier, Nell was toasting her laundry on the dock,

which was the best place to dry it.

It had been the best place for 70 years.

But she didn't put rocks on top of her cotton yoga pants,

though she ought to have known better.

And then she went back up the hill to the house

through the sighing and rustling trees.

The pants are light white, and they seem to have blown away.

...