This is the New Yorker fiction podcast from the New Yorker magazine.
I'm Deborah Treisman, fiction editor at the New Yorker.
Each month we invite a writer to choose a story from the magazine's archives to read and discuss.
This month, we're going to hear a story by Eudora Welty called where is the voice coming from?
I says, roland, there was one way left for me to be ahead of you and stay ahead of you, and I just taken it.
Now I'm alive and you ain't.
Where is the voice coming from?
Was chosen by Joyce Carol Oates, whose book reviews, fiction, and poetry have been appearing in the magazine since 1994.
Joyce Carol Oates is the author of many novels and short story collections.
Her latest novel is called my Sister, my Love, the intimate story of Skyler Rampike, and it's published by Echo Press.
She joins me from a studio in Princeton, New Jersey.
Hi, Joyce.
Hi.
So is Eudora Welty someone who's meant a lot to you as a fellow writer?
Absolutely.
I began reading Eudora Welty when I was in high school, and I was just mesmerized by her ability to write so beautifully, so lyrically at the same time as in this story, so powerfully.
And what was it that most struck you?
Was it the subject matter or the style?
I've read a number of Eudora Welty's stories in which she uses voices.
It's a way of writing that I like very much myself.