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 Patricia Heismit's story, The Trouble with Mrs. Blin,

The Trouble with the World, which was published in The New Yorker in 2002.

Elsie-Hannand Mrs. Palmer, a cup of tea, was three lumps of sugar, but no skull.

Because Mrs. Blin said they were too indagestible for her.

Mrs. Palmer did not mind.

She appreciated the sight of well-buttered skulls, anyway.

And of healthy people like Mrs. Blin eating them.

The story was chosen by Yee and Lee, the author of two novels and two story collections,

whose own stories have been appearing in The New Yorker since 2003.

Her work was included in the magazine's 20 under 40 issue and anthology in 2010.

Hi, Yee-un.

Hi, Deborah.

Not a last time that you were on the podcast, which was in 2009, you chose a story by the

Irish writer, John McGarron, which was set in a small Irish town.

And this story is set in a small town on the English coast.

So I'm thinking there's something that draws you to this kind of setting.

There is that quietness, the danger in the quiet setting that I feel.

You've drawn to, I think.

...