This is the New Yorker Fiction Podcast from the New Yorker magazine.

I'm Debra 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 Galatin Canyon by Thomas McWayne, which was published in

the New Yorker in January of 2003.

The road stretched before me like an arrow.

There was only enough of it left before Rigby for me to say, perhaps involuntarily.

I wonder if we should just get married.

Louise quickly looked away.

The story was chosen by Taya Obre, who was the author of two novels, The Tiger's Wife

and Inland.

Hi, Taya.

Hi, Debra.

So you said when we first talked about doing a podcast episode that you wanted to read

a Western story, why was that?

I think that there's a renewed interest in literature of the West and also by authors

who hail from the West.

And this story I think is so deeply rooted in landscape and space and a certain kind

of mentality of the Mountain West, which it both honors and excoriates.

I love the story ever since I first read it and it just feels very emblematic of the

space to me.

...