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

Miranda July reads her story from the September 4, 2017, issue of the magazine.  July is a writer, artist, film director, and actor.  She is the author of the story collection “No One Belongs Here More Than You,” and a novel, “The First Bad Man,” which was published in 2015.  Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

What the storm had erased was the silence from the other cabin. For hours, there had been no laughing, no bottle caps falling, none of the bickering that the girls had grown used to over the past two days. This was because there were no more adults. They’d been left alone on the island, the two little girls. Four and seven.  Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

I knew I was acting badly, that I was looking too brazenly and too long, that I shouldn’t have looked at all. I would be ashamed later but I wasn’t ashamed now, I kept watching as the stream weakened and became intermittent, let him know, I said to myself, he already knows, let him see it. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Gertrude holds her belly in skeletal arms. She sinks to her knees before Christina, pulls at Christina’s limp hands. “Please let me keep it,”she begs.“Please, Christina. I know you can intercede with God. Please do this for me.”  Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

What if she’s forgotten what he looks like? What if she’s gone crazy? What if he’s here, lying in one of those cribs, and she sees him every single day without realizing he’s her son? What if it’s been too long? What if memory fails? What if everything fails, and getting through life is simply learning to cope with the failure? No, she scolds herself. Don’t think like that. Don’t let yourself give way. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Arthur Less recalls intercontinental-travel advice that his old flame Freddy once gave him: "They serve you dinner, you take your sleeping pill, they serve you breakfast, you're there." Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

"One rainy night, in March, 2009, we crossed a muddy field to intercept a group of Taliban who’d come out of the mountains of Pakistan. They were walking west. We were patrolling north to arrive at a point ahead of them, where we’d set up an ambush."   Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

"On a Tuesday morning, she knocked on the door of 213. A corner room. Larger than standard. With two big windows instead of one. Twenty more dollars a night. The guest had been there for three nights and was sup- posed to check out by noon. She knocked again. “Housekeeping,” she said. Then said it louder, “Housekeeping.”" Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

"A lot of the people in our program were nakedly emotional in a way that, in childhood, I had so successfully trained myself not to be that I almost really wasn’t. Before entering grad school, I had never felt normal, but here I was competent and well adjusted to a boring degree. I always showed up for class. I met deadlines. I made eye contact. Of course I was chronically sad, and of course various phobias lay dormant inside me, but none of that was currently dictating my behavior" Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

What’s the scariest sound a person can hear? In a quiet country house where the closest neighbors are pretty far away, the scariest possible sound is a man coughing outside at night.   Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices