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

I'm Deborah Treasman, Fiction Editor at The New Yorker.

On this episode of The Writer's Voice, we'll hear Mona O'Wod read her story, The Chartreuse from the July 28th, 2025 issue of the magazine.

Awad is the author of four books of fiction, including 13 ways of looking at a fat girl, which won the Amazon Best First Novel Award, and Rouge, which was published in 2023.

A new novel, We Love You Bunny, will come out in September.

Now here's Mona Awad.

The Shartreuse. The Dress had come and gone, and she'd missed it apparently.

Sorry we missed you, the FedEx tag on her door said.

That was all they'd left her with, a tag.

How could you have missed me, she thought, her heart thudding.

I only just went down to throw the garbage away.

She stared at her white front door, which was covered in rust spots, so many that it looked diseased. I wasn't even gone a minute, she told the door. The delivery had been inexplicably

delayed for a few days now.

She'd seen this online using the track your package feature,

which she had been checking hourly, then half-hourly,

on both her laptop and her phone.

According to the graphic, which resembled a giant red thermometer,

the dress had been packed in Marilly-la-Ville-France. Then it had been packed in Maris laville, France, then it had been shipped

off to somewhere called Le Menil Amelau, then Fort Worth, then made pit stops in random

seeming places in California, Oakland, Ontario. Why? Before it at last reached San Diego,

where it had languished all night

"'in a warehouse facility downtown.

...