Tea Obreht Reads Stephanie Vaughn

The New Yorker: Fiction

WNYC Studios and The New Yorker

Yorker, Wnyc, Literature, Books, New, Fiction, Arts

4.6 • 3.6K Ratings

🗓️ 16 December 2011

⏱️ 45 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Tea Obreht reads Stephanie Vaughn's "Able, Baker, Charlie, Dog," and discusses it with The New Yorker's fiction editor, Deborah Treisman. "Able, Baker, Charlie, Dog" was published in the June 5, 1978, issue of The New Yorker and can be found in "Sweet Talk," which will be reissued in 2012. Tea Obreht is the author of the novel "The Tiger's Wife."

Transcript

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0:00.0	This is the New Yorker Fiction Podcast from the New Yorker magazine.
0:06.4	I'm Deborah Treesman, fiction editor at The New Yorker.
0:09.4	Each month we invite a writer to choose a story from the magazine's archives to read
0:13.1	and discuss.
0:14.4	This month we're going to hear Abel Baker Charlie Dogg by Stephanie Vaughn.
0:19.0	My father's voice grew lower, fuller.
0:22.5	We sat under the sound of it and felt safe.
0:25.9	The story was chosen by Taya Obrecht, whose novel The Tiger's Wife, which was excerpted
0:30.2	in the New Yorker, was a finalist for this year's National Book Award.
0:33.9	Last year, her story, Bluewater Gin, was featured in our 20 Under 40 Fiction Issue.
0:38.6	She joins me from the studios of Cornell University.
0:41.3	Hi Taya.
0:42.3	Hi Deborah.
0:43.3	So Stephanie Vaughn teaches at Cornell where you did your MFA, were you a student of hers?
0:48.0	I was, you know, and she was an incredible teacher and a great mentor to me and I actually
0:54.7	hadn't read her work until I was no longer her student.
0:57.8	Were you avoiding it on purpose?
0:59.5	I think to some degree, yes.
1:01.3	I think that if you find that you don't have similarities with a mentor in the way you
1:06.8	approach your work, you know, you sort of tend to shy away from their advice and it turns
1:13.8	out that I absolutely admire and love her work and I wish I had known this before I
1:20.6	had been her student.
	...

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