This is The Writer's Voice, new fiction from The New Yorker.

I'm Debra Triesman, fiction editor at The New Yorker.

On this episode of The Writer's Voice, we'll hear Han Ahung read his story, I Am Pizza Rat,

from the October 23rd, 2023 issue of the magazine.

They're a sippy end of a Carthor Fellowship in the Berlin Prize.

Ahung is the author of more than a dozen plays and two novels.

Professor Chao and the disinherited.

Now here's Han Ahung.

I Am Pizza Rat.

At the San Mateo Community Center, a sign tacked up at the end of the hallway says,

if you're here for falling naturally, you've walked too far.

Go back, it's the middle door.

On closer inspection, the comma turns out to be some schmutz or stray ink.

The young Filipino instructor allows me and another non-student, Boone, an African nurse,

to observe.

We sit away from the participants at the back of the basketball court that has been

commandeered for falling naturally.

Matt's cover a large section of the floor and the centerpiece is an obstacle course

made of hard foam.

The color scheme is schoolyard, not a pleasure on the eyes.

Boone's charge is the friendly white guy with a belly and the tanshore.

Mine is my father and we are both old men.

...