Bryan Washington Reads “Last Coffeehouse on Travis”
The New Yorker: The Writer's Voice - New Fiction from The New Yorker
WNYC Studios and The New Yorker
4.5 • 2.1K Ratings
🗓️ 8 September 2024
⏱️ 49 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Bryan Washington reads his story “Last Coffeehouse on Travis,” from the September 16, 2024, issue of the magazine. A winner of the Ernest J. Gaines Award for Literary Excellence, the International Dylan Thomas Prize, and the Lambda Literary Award, Washington is the author of one story collection and two novels, “Memorial,” which came out in 2020, and “Family Meal,” which was published last year.
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Transcript
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| 0:34.0 | Thanks for listening. This is The writer's voice, new fiction from the New Yorker. |
| 0:49.0 | I'm Deborah Treisman, fiction editor at the New Yorker. |
| 0:52.0 | On this week's episode of the writer's voice, we'll hear Brian A policeman, fiction editor at the New Yorker. |
| 0:52.5 | On this week's episode of the writer's voice, we'll hear Brian Washington read his story |
| 0:56.6 | Last Coffee House on Travis from the September 16th, 2024 issue of the magazine. |
| 1:02.0 | A winner of the Ernest J. Gaines Award for Literary Excellence. the through one story collection and two novels, Memorial which came out in 2020 and Family Meal, which was published last year. |
| 1:17.0 | Now here's Brian Washington. Last coffee house on Travis. For a few months I stayed with my honest friend in Midtown, back when she could still afford to live there. |
| 1:35.0 | Now it's filled with condos and they're all a trillion dollars a month. |
| 1:39.0 | But in those days, she owned the house and also a coffee house a few blocks away. |
| 1:45.9 | I was too broke to pay rent, so every morning saw me behind the counter. |
| 1:50.9 | This was the arrangement. |
| 2:01.0 | I had just broken up with my ex, a doctor with legible handwriting, an ungenerous top, because he was moving to Austin and I wasn't down to do that. Marco lived with her young son, Walter. |
| 2:04.8 | Sometimes he went by Walt. The name his father called him. But his father was gone. |
| 2:10.8 | My aunt had introduced the two of them to me as her good friends, which meant they'd either |
... |
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