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

I'm Deborah Treesman, fiction editor at The New Yorker.

On this week's episode of The Writer's Voice, we'll hear Sheila Hetty read her story,

The St. Alwyn Girls at Sea, from the January 27th, 2025 issue of the magazine.

Hetty is the author of 11 books, including the novel Pure Color, which won the Governor

General's Award in 2022, and alphabetical diaries, which was published last year.

Now here's Sheila Heddy.

The St. Elwyn Girls at Sea.

There was a general sadness that day on the ship.

Danny was walking listlessly from cabin to cabin, delivering little paper flyers announcing the talent show at the end of the month. She had made them the previous week, then had come

news that the boy's ship would not be attending. It almost wasn't worth handing out flyers at all,

almost as if the show had been cancelled. The boy's ship had changed course. It was now going

to be near Gibraltar on the night

of the performance, nowhere near where their ship would be in the middle of the North Atlantic Sea.

Every girl in school had already heard Danny sing and knew that her voice was strong and good.

The important thing was for Sebastian to know. Now Sebastian would never know, and it might be months before she would

see him again, if she ever would see him again. All she had to look forward to now were his

letters, and they were only delivered once a week. And no matter how closely Danny examined them,

she could never have perfect confidence that he loved her because of all his mentions of a

girlfriend back home.

The best thing about liking a boy was that it filled in all your time.

You could lie on your bed and listen to music for an entire afternoon, daydreaming about him, feelings traveling deliciously all throughout your body.

...