This is the writer's voice, and I'm Deborah Treesman, fiction editor of The New Yorker.

Today we're featuring something a little different, not new fiction from the magazine, but

a conversation.

On a recent episode of The New Yorker Radio Hour, I spoke with Tessa Hadley about her years

of writing short stories for The magazine, and the years before that when she was learning

how to write.

Listeners of the writer's voice will know her voice well.

I thought I would share the interview with you here.

In 2002, The New Yorker first published a short story by Tessa Hadley.

Titled Lost and Found, the story described a friendship between two women who had been

close since childhood.

Hadley's fiction is often consumed with relationships at this scale, tight dramas close to home.

Within these relationships, she captures an extraordinary depth and complexity of emotion.

The New Yorker recently published its 30th story from Tessa Hadley.

That's more than any other fiction writer in recent times.

She spoke recently with our fiction editor, Deborah Treesman.

So I want to talk to you about your new story collection after The Funeral, which I think

is your 12th book of fiction, but before we launch on that,

let's go back to your first, Accidents in the Home, which was published in 2002.

And a lot has been made of the fact that you published your first book in your 40s.

So what happened in the years before that, before Accidents in the Home?

Lots of writing and failing, lots of trying to do it and getting it really wrong.

...