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 Saeed Sarifizade read his story,

audition from the September 10th, 2018 issue of the magazine.

Sarah Fizzade is the author of the story collection

Brief Encounters with the Enemy,

which was a finalist for the Penn Robert W. Bingham Prize

for debut fiction in 2014.

He won a 2010 Whiting Writers Award for his memoir

when skateboards will be free.

Now here's Saeed Sarifizade.

Audition.

The first time I smoked crack cocaine was the spring I worked construction from my father

on his new subdivision in Moonlight Heights. My original plan had been to go to college,

specifically for the arts, specifically for acting, where I'd envisioned strolling shoeless around

campus with a notepad, jotting down details about the people I observed, so that I would later

be able to replicate the human condition on screen with nuance and veracity. Instead, I was

unmatriculated in 19, working six days a week, making $8 an hour, no more or less

than what the other general laborers were being paid, and which is what passed, at least for

myself-made father, as fairness.

Occasionally, I would be cast in a community theater production of Neil Simon, or the mystery of Edwin Drood,

popular but uncomplicated fair, which we would rehearse for a month before performing in front of an audience of 15.

...