This is the writer's voice, new fiction from the New Yorker. I'm Deborah

Treisman fiction at the New Yorker. On this episode of the writer's voice we'll hear

Rivka Galchen, read her story Crown Heights North from the January 1st and 8th

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, which was published

in 2021. Now here's Rivka Galchen.

Crown Heights North

The Dead Man decided to try the running app. He hadn't run for years, not since his mid-30s.

Now he was in his early 50s. Or he had been in his early 50s recently enough.

Would he be in his early 50s forever?

He tapped the gray oblong and waited as the percentage downloaded dial advanced, slowly. Much has yet to be revealed, he whispered to himself.

And it only had used more often when he was a kid,

when he had expected his life to resemble a tale of adventure or of horror or one with a mystery to solve or a magical stone to obtain.

He felt kind of embarrassed, but why and in front of whom.

He had heard good things about the app and he didn't want to run, quote, alone.

A voice to keep him company.

It was like that Ray Bradbury story he'd read so many times

when he was young.

Even after he knew its trick, the story was still compelling.

In it, an automated voice in a house says things like,

915, time to clean.

Which poem would you like this evening?

...