This is The New Yorker Fiction Podcast from The New Yorker Magazine.

I'm Deborah Treesman, Fiction Editor at The New Yorker.

Each month we invite a writer to choose a story from the magazine's archives to read and discuss.

This month we're going to hear love by William Maxwell.

We meant to have her for our teacher forever.

We intended to pass right up through the sixth, seventh, and eighth grades

and all in the high school taking her with us.

The story was chosen by Tony Early, whose short stories have been appearing in the magazine since 1999.

His latest novel, The Blue Star, was published in 2008.

And his new collection of stories Mr. Tall will come out next year.

Hi Tony.

Hi Deborah.

William Maxwell was a fiction writer and also the fiction editor of The New Yorker from 1936 to 1975.

And his story love was published in the magazine in 1983 when he was 75.

I think you were in your, maybe in your early 20s then, did you read it at that point?

No I didn't, I read it much later.

1983 that's the year I graduated from college.

And so how did you come across the story?

Well I just came through Maxwell later and began sort of pulling through the archives and reading the stories.

So what is it that attracts you most to Maxwell's work?

I like Maxwell for many of the same reasons that I like Will a Gather and that he's not afraid to write emotionally about

emotions.

...