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 Oetessa Mosheg, read her story The Comedian from the July 7th and 14th, 2025 issue of the writer's voice, we'll hear Otessa Moshweg read her story The Comedian

from the July 7th and 14th, 2025 issue of the magazine.

Moshweg is the author of one story collection and four novels, including Eileen,

for which she won the Penn Hemingway Award in 2016, My Year of Rest in Relaxation,

and Laphona, which came out in 2022.

Now here's Atessa Moshe.

The Comedian

My father worked nights as the desk attendant at a cheap hotel downtown. It was a

thankless job behind bulletproof glass, which was all he had to shield him from demented

drunks and screeching prostitutes, from seven in the evening until four in the morning, the poor man.

But he had to do it.

The next month's rent was always due.

Life cost money.

I was in high school and growing so quickly that I needed new shoes all the time.

And he had to pay my clarinet teacher

and the girl who came to clean once a week.

My mother hadn't been able to work for years already.

By the time I turned 16, she was completely blind.

And so while my father was downtown with the scum of the earth, it was my job to keep my mother

company, to feed her and put her to bed, etc. Our ground floor apartment had no views, but was crowded

...