This is The Writer's Voice, new fiction from The New Yorker.

I'm Deborah Treasman, fiction editor at The New Yorker.

On this week's episode of The Writer's Voice, we'll hear Yiyun Lee read her story, Any Human Heart, from the June 23rd, 2025 issue of the magazine.

Lee is the author of eight books of fiction, including the novels Must I Goose and the Book of Goose,

and the story collection Wednesday's Child, which was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in 2024.

A new non-fiction book, Things in Nature, Merely Grow, was published in May.

Now here's Yi and Lee.

Any Human Heart

Rossi's auto repair and false service gas had been there

for as long as Marine had been a resident of this New Jersey town.

It was the last business along the only thoroughfare.

Past it, the street shed its name and was called a highway, even though it was

the same street, now lined with residential blocks. On the curb near the gas station was a bench,

installed by whom Moraine did not know, and she seemed to be the only beneficiary. A green metal statue of Bruce

Springsteen, attributed by a local artist to one of the greatest New Jerseyans, had been a recent

addition, and it stood next to the bench. Marine remembered the years before Bruce Bruce's arrival more clearly than the time after.

She was 88, though this she did not advertise.

She resented the way the receptionists and the nurses at every medical facility would start a conversation by asking her to confirm her birthday.

Seeing a date made her feel old.

More so if someone marvelled at how well she looked or at herself deprecating humor,

which she felt obliged to offer, lest sharper words

slip out. At her age, being prickly was neither enchanting nor gainful. Only when she was

...