The Lonely Voice

Dorothy West was just 17 years old when she wrote “The Typewriter,” a quietly devastating story about dreams, family and the painful cost of disillusionment. Peter Orner and Yvette Benavides discuss the story and the remarkable psychological insight of Dorothy West — and the worlds she went on to create for decades.

Stephanie Vaughn’s “Able, Baker, Charlie, Dog,” is a sharp, tender story about family, memory and the limits of understanding we experience in childhood — and that open up for us when we look back as adults. A daughter looks back on life with her father and tries to piece together the man he was, the man he wanted to be and the father she remembers.

What happens when admiration turns into envy — and envy takes hold of an entire life? Yvette Benavides and Peter Orner discuss José Emilio Pacheco’s haunting short story, “The Claw.”

What does it mean to love a place — and still long to leave it? In Alistair MacLeod’s haunting short story “The Boat,” a son struggles between family, tradition and the pull of a different life. On this episode of The Lonely Voice, we explore a powerful story about the sea, sacrifice and the choices that shape who we become.

Peter Orner and Yvette Benavides explore the 1959 short story "Asigh" by the incomparable Mary Lavin. They examine this beautiful, poignant story about a protagonist who remains resilient in the face of domestic tension and psychological confinement in rural Ireland.

In "The Tea Ceremony" by Gina Berriault, protagonist, Delia, struggles with wanting beautiful things. Her family's hardscrabble life doesn't measure up. She isn't the most beautiful girl in her class. While she is liked, she doesn't have any friends. Beauty becomes closely linked to her ability to imagine her future. But somehow, perhaps, she will finally see that there was always a kind of beauty closer to home.

This is a special episode of "The Lonely Voice." Hosts Yvette Benavides and Peter Orner welcome guest host Alex Gordon to discuss "Train Dreams" by Denis Johnson — and the Oscar-nominated film adaptation of that novella.

Yvette Benavides and Peter Orner discuss Roberto Bolaño' short story " Gómez Palacio." A young writer travels to a desolate northern Mexican town to interview for a teaching position during a particularly grim period of his life. Telling the story in hindsight allows us to see the ways the place was actually unforgettable.

Yvette Benavides and Peter Orner discuss "Berries" and other stories from Kolyma Stories by Varlam Shalamov. The author underscores the horrors of totalitarianism and the will to survive of the characters in the stories that are based on all-too real events and situations that the author himself experienced.

To celebrate the fiftieth episode of "The Lonely Voice" podcast, Peter Orner and Yvette Benavides discuss the four stories in the "Edouard, Juliette, Lena" story cycle — "A Recollection," "The Colonel's Child," "Rue de Lille," and "Lena."