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 Sam Lipsight, read his story, Final Boy, from the October 27th, 2025 issue of the writer's voice, we'll hear Sam Lipsight read his story, Final Boy,

from the October 27th, 2025 issue of the magazine.

Lipcite is the author of eight books of fiction, including the story collection The Fun Parts,

and the novels The Ask, and no one left to come looking for you, which was published in 2022.

Now here's Sam Lipsight.

Final Boy. Thing is, I've been trying to find a moment to write down what happened to

Bennett and me for a while now, but the demands of my audience rarely

abate. Soon as I post a fresh installment of Charles' final boy, readers clamor for more.

I've hardly time to jot down a grocery list, let alone compose a personal chronicle.

Bennett says I'm practically the Charles, as in Dickens, of scribblers devoted to mining

the rich vein of a certain underappreciated sitcom of the 1980s.

But I will leave that for history to judge.

Besides, what does Bennett know?

He's practically dead.

Just before he got that way, I was in a muck-moka, where I liked to

sip cold brew and do my CFB conjuring, and I struck up a conversation with a young woman who confessed

to being a creative writing student. She told me that in her workshop, they talk about the occasion of the

story. Why is the narrator telling

this tale now? What pressures or conditions have coalesced to move a person to speak? I feigned ignorance

of the concept, though I'd heard it often in my own writing classes long ago. Instead, I told her

...