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 Sterling Holy White Mountain read his story, Featherweight, from the April 5th, 2021 issue of the magazine.

Holy White Mountain is a former Stegner fellow and current Jones lecturer at Stanford University he is an

unrecognized citizen of the Blackfeet nation he's at work on a novel now

here's Sterling Holy White Mountain. Featherweight.

When I first met my love, I'd been off my reservation for a little more than a year.

I'd become acculturated, we'll say, to university life, and willingly.

I wanted to know what larger America was all about.

I took on the aspect of a young dog.

Everything was new to me.

I had my nose up everyone's ass.

First there was Lana, then Julie, then a few other names I can't remember.

Then there was Barbara.

That should have been the name of a grandmother, but in fact it belonged to a sweet thing who liked to call me her favorite Indian toy.

I'll be whatever you want, I said, long as we keep knocking those boots.

Which we did, because she was young, almost too young for a guy more than a few years out of high school.

She had the courage that belongs only to those who don't know

that death is just down the block, waiting to introduce himself. As for me, I was not yet old enough

to not feel young. According to the literature, I should have been well on my way to a fulfilling life

of stability and money and houses or whatever. But she didn't know that. I was just finishing my

gen eds, trying to stay awake,

...