Hi, I'm Lavar Burton and this is...

Lavar Burton Reads.

In every episode I handpick a different piece of short fiction and I read it to you.

The only thing these stories have in common is that I love them and I hope you will too.

First, real quick.

I just want to say that we are now accepting submissions of short stories for the Lavar Burton Reads writing contest.

Woohoo!

From now until August 31st, you can submit a story and we have two wonderful editors on the case,

Andy Lewis and Diana Imfo. And together we will choose one story to read on the podcast,

plus the top three entries will be published at Tor.com.

Now I assume you listen to the podcast since you're hearing this, so you probably have a good idea of what I'm looking for,

but you can find the guidelines and the theme at Lavar Burton Podcast.com slash contest.

Now we will only accept submissions until August 31st, so if you haven't written your story by now,

get busy. You've got a little bit of time left. And I am so looking forward to reading your stories.

And now on to today's read.

It's entitled You Perfect Broken Thing. And it's by the author, CL Clark.

Now this story was first published in Uncanny Magazine and was nominated for an Ignite Short Story Award.

Sheree or CL is the author of The Unbroken, the first book in the Magic of the Lost trilogy.

She graduated from Indiana University's Creative Writing MFA program and was a 2012 Lambda Literary Fellow.

She's been a personal trainer and English teacher and an editor. And it makes perfect sense to me that Sheree has worked as a personal trainer

because I was absolutely blown away at how accurately she describes the experience of extreme physical training,

of trying to get the body to do what we wanted to do.

...