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

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

On this episode of The Writer's Voice,

we'll hear Rebecca Mackay read her story The Plaza

from the May 8, 2023 issue of The Magazine.

Mackay is the author of a story collection in four novels,

including The Great Believers,

which won the Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction,

and was a finalist for the National Book Award.

And I have some questions for you, which came out in February.

Now here's Rebecca Mackay.

The Plaza.

In both 1946 and 1947, Margie Bixby was crowned

Trout Queen of the Upper Delaware River.

An honor she lost in 1948, only because it wouldn't do

for the daughter of the newspaper editor,

the editor of the paper that sponsored the pageant

to win three times.

Still, she was the undisputed local beauty,

a striking girl with a stronger resemblance to the modiliani's

in the library art books than to a dish soap model.

She wasn't even blonde to the annoyance of those

...