The New Yorker: The Writer's Voice - New Fiction from The New Yorker

WNYC Studios and The New Yorker

New Yorker fiction writers read their stories. read less

Our Editor's Take

The New Yorker: The Writer's Voice - New Fiction From The New Yorker is the magazine's official podcast. Here, celebrated writers share their fiction.

Every week on The Writer's Voice, The New Yorker showcases a short story from their collection. Reading these short stories are the people who wrote them. Authors such as Alejandro Zambra, Miranda July, and David Remnick read their stories. In audiobook fashion, these expert storytellers read their own and others' narratives from beginning to end. This approach allows the listener to enjoy each story from a different perspective.

Curated by Deborah Treisman, each chosen tale is intriguing and thought-provoking. "A Wrinkle in the Realm" is one such example. Ben Okri's short piece explores a man's struggle with other people's perceptions of him. It is a tale that emulates the reality many people face daily. Camille Bordas' "One Sun Only" is another thoughtful listen. This narrative focuses on a father and his children as they approach the concept of death. These are just some literary works listeners can expect to hear on this podcast.

Treisman will also sometimes explore stories deep within the catalog. Such fiction includes classic pieces like Shirley Jackson's "The Lottery." Joyce Carol Oates and Margaret Atwood have also joined the podcast in the past to read their fiction. These archive stories are as entertaining as they are captivating.

The New Yorker: The Writer's Voice - New Fiction From The New Yorker is one of many podcasts created and developed by The New Yorker. Since 1925, this world-renowned magazine has published award-winning prose and poetry. It transcends the page by sharing those stories with modern audiences via podcasts. Listeners can enjoy these quintessential stories in a different way. Whether recounting a classic work of fiction or an unfamiliar one, this series can bring plenty of enjoyment.

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Jamil Jan Kochai Reads “On the Night of the Khatam”

Jamil Jan Kochai Reads “On the Night of the Khatam”

Jamil Jan Kochai reads his story “On the Night of the Khatam” from the February 26, 2024, issue of the magazine. Kochai is the author of the novel “99 Nights in Logar” and the collection “The Haunting of Hajji Hotak and Other Stories,” which was a finalist for the National Book Award in 2022 and won the 2023 Aspen Words Literary Prize.

Episodes

Jamil Jan Kochai Reads “On the Night of the Khatam”

Jamil Jan Kochai Reads “On the Night of the Khatam”

Jamil Jan Kochai reads his story “On the Night of the Khatam” from the February 26, 2024, issue of the magazine. Kochai is the author of the novel “99 Nights in Logar” and the collection “The Haunting of Hajji Hotak and Other Stories,” which was a finalist for the National Book Award in 2022 and won the 2023 Aspen Words Literary Prize.

Addie Citchens Reads “That Girl”

Addie Citchens Reads “That Girl”

Addie Citchens reads her story “That Girl,” from the February 12 & 19, 2024, issue of the magazine. Citchens is a Mississippi Delta-born, New Orleans-based writer of fiction and nonfiction. She has published work in the Oxford American and The Paris Review, among other places.

Patrick Langley Reads “Life with Spider”

Patrick Langley Reads “Life with Spider”

Patrick Langley reads his story “Life with Spider,” from the February, 5, 2024, issue of the magazine. Langley is the author of two novels, “Arkady” and “The Variations,” which came out in the U.K. last year, and will be published in the U.S. on February 20th.

David Means Reads “Chance the Cat”

David Means Reads “Chance the Cat”

David Means reads his story “Chance the Cat,” from the January 22, 2024, issue of the magazine. Means is the author of the novel “Hystopia” and six story collections, including “Instructions for a Funeral” and “Two Nurses Smoking,” which was published in 2022.

Joy Williams Reads “The Beach House”

Joy Williams Reads “The Beach House”

Joy Williams reads her story “The Beach House,” from the January 15, 2024, issue of the magazine. Williams, a winner of the Library of Congress Prize for American Fiction, is the author of five story collections, including “Ninety-Nine Stories of God” and “The Visiting Privilege: New and Collected Stories,” and five novels, such as “Harrow,” which was published in 2021.

Greg Jackson Reads “Wagner in the Desert”

Greg Jackson Reads “Wagner in the Desert”

On a special, archival New Year’s episode, Greg Jackson reads his story “Wagner in the Desert,” from the July 21, 2014, issue of the magazine, in which a group of old friends convene in Palm Springs, California, for the week between Christmas and New Year’s. Jackson, a winner of the National Book Foundation’s 5 Under 35 Award, is the author of the story collection “Prodigals” and the novel “The Dimensions of a Cave,” which was published in October, 2023.

Rivka Galchen Reads “Crown Heights North”

Rivka Galchen Reads “Crown Heights North”

Rivka Galchen reads her story “Crown Heights North,” from the January 1 & 8, 2024, issue of the magazine. Galchen is the author of three books of fiction, including the story collection “American Innovations” and the novel “Everyone Knows Your Mother Is a Witch.”

Caleb Crain Reads “Keats at Twenty-Four”

Caleb Crain Reads “Keats at Twenty-Four”

Caleb Crain reads his story “Keats at Twenty-Four,” from the December 11, 2023, issue of the magazine. Crain is the author of one book of nonfiction and two novels, “Necessary Errors,” which was a finalist for the Lambda Literary Award, and “Overthrow,” which was published in 2019.

Teju Cole Reads “Incoming”

Teju Cole Reads “Incoming”

Teju Cole reads his story “Incoming,” which appears in the December 4, 2023, issue of the magazine. Cole, a winner of the PEN/Hemingway Award and the Windham Campbell Literature Prize, is a novelist, critic, curator, and essayist. His novel “Tremor” was published earlier this year and a new book, “Pharmakon,” a collection of prose pieces and photographs, will be published in 2024.

Madeleine Thien Reads Yoko Ogawa

Madeleine Thien Reads Yoko Ogawa

The story in The New Yorker’s November 27, 2023, issue is “Beauty Contest,” by Yoko Ogawa, translated from the Japanese by Steven Snyder. Ogawa was not able to read her story for The Writer’s Voice, but, on a recent episode of the New Yorker Fiction Podcast, the writer Madeleine Thien read and discussed Ogawa’s 2004 story “The Cafeteria in the Evening and a Pool in the Rain,” and we wanted to share that episode with you instead. We hope you enjoy it.

Sheila Heti Reads “According to Alice”

Sheila Heti Reads “According to Alice”

Sheila Heti reads her story “According to Alice,” which appears in the November 20, 2023, issue of the magazine. Heti wrote this story in collaboration with a customizable chatbot on the Chai AI platform, which she began engaging in conversation in 2022. Heti is the author of seven books, including the novels “Motherhood,” which was short-listed for the Giller Prize, and “Pure Color,” which won the Governor General’s Award last year.

Clare Sestanovich Reads “Our Time Is Up”

Clare Sestanovich Reads “Our Time Is Up”

Clare Sestanovich reads her story “Our Time Is Up,” which appears in the November 13, 2023, issue of the magazine. Sestanovich’s début story collection, “Objects of Desire,” which came out in 2021, was a finalist for the PEN Robert W. Bingham Prize, and she was named a “5 Under 35” honoree by the National Book Foundation in 2022.

Junot Díaz Reads “The Ghosts of Gloria Lara”

Junot Díaz Reads “The Ghosts of Gloria Lara”

Junot Díaz reads his story “The Ghosts of Gloria Lara,” which appears in the November 6, 2023, issue of the magazine. Díaz is the author of the story collections “Drown” and “This Is How You Lose Her,” and the novel “The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao,” for which he won the Pulitzer Prize in Fiction in 2008.

Han Ong Reads “I Am Pizza Rat”

Han Ong Reads “I Am Pizza Rat”

Ong, the recipient of a MacArthur Fellowship and a Berlin Prize, is the author of more than a dozen plays and two novels, “Fixer Chao” and “The Disinherited.”

Mary Costello Reads “The Choc-Ice Woman”

Mary Costello Reads “The Choc-Ice Woman”

Mary Costello reads her story “The Choc-Ice Woman,” which appears in the October 16, 2023, issue of the magazine. Costello is the author of three books of fiction, including “Academy Street,” which won the Irish Novel of the Year Award, and the novel “The River Capture,” which came out in 2019.

Lore Segal Reads “On the Agenda”

Lore Segal Reads “On the Agenda”

Lore Segal reads her story “On the Agenda,” which appears in the September 18, 2023, issue of the magazine. Segal’s most recent books are “The Journal I Did Not Keep: New and Selected Writing” and “Ladies’ Lunch: and Other Stories,” which comes out later this month.

Lara Vapnyar Reads “Siberian Wood”

Lara Vapnyar Reads “Siberian Wood”

Lara Vapnyar reads her story “Siberian Wood,” which appears in the September 11, 2023, issue of the magazine. Vapnyar has published two short story collections and four novels, including “Still Here” and “Divide Me By Zero,” which came out in 2019.

Tessa Hadley on Her Years of Learning to Write

Tessa Hadley on Her Years of Learning to Write

In July, The New Yorker published its thirtieth story by Tessa Hadley—a higher count that of any other fiction writer in the past two decades. On a recent episode of the New Yorker Radio Hour, the fiction editor Deborah Treisman spoke with Hadley about her genesis as a fiction writer. Hadley’s latest story collection is “After the Funeral.”

T. Coraghessan Boyle Reads “The End Is Only a Beginning”

T. Coraghessan Boyle Reads “The End Is Only a Beginning”

T. Coraghessan Boyle reads his story “The End Is Only a Beginning,” which appears in the August 21, 2023, issue of the magazine. Boyle has published more than two dozen books of fiction, including the story collection, “I Walk Between the Raindrops,” and the novel “Blue Skies,” which came out earlier this year.

Karan Mahajan Reads “The True Margaret”

Karan Mahajan Reads “The True Margaret”

Karan Mahajan reads his story “The True Margaret,” which appears in the August 14, 2023, issue of the magazine. Mahajan is the author of two novels, “Family Planning” and “The Association of Small Bombs,” which won the New York Public Library Young Lions Fiction Award in 2017.