Jim Shepard Reads “The Queen of Bad Influences”

Zadie Smith reads her story “The Silence,” from the July 7 & 14, 2025, issue of the magazine. Smith, a winner of the Orange Prize for Fiction and the PEN/Audible Literary Service Award, among others, is the author of two short-story collections and six novels, including “NW,” “Swing Time,” and “The Fraud,” which was published in 2023. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Ottessa Moshfegh reads her story “The Comedian,” from the July 7 & 14, 2025, issue of the magazine. Moshfegh is the author of one story collection and four novels, including “Eileen,” for which she won the PEN/Hemingway Award in 2016; “My Year of Rest and Relaxation”; and “Lapvona,” which came out in 2022. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Jhumpa Lahiri reads her story “Jubilee,” from the July 7 & 14, 2025, issue of the magazine. Lahiri, a recipient of the National Humanities Medal and the PEN/Malamud Award, among others, is the author of six books of fiction, including the story collections “Interpreter of Maladies,” which won the Pulitzer Prize in 2000, and “Roman Stories,” which was written in Italian and published in English in 2023. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Han Ong reads his story “Happy Days,” from the June 30, 2025, issue of the magazine. The recipient of a MacArthur Fellowship and the Berlin Prize, Ong is the author of more than a dozen plays and two novels, “Fixer Chao” and “The Disinherited.” Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Yiyun Li reads her story “Any Human Heart,” from the June 23, 2025, issue of the magazine. Li is the author of eight books of fiction, including the novels “Must I Go” and “The Book of Goose,” and the story collection “Wednesday’s Child,” which was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in 2024. A new nonfiction book, “Things in Nature Merely Grow,” was published in May. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Jim Shepard reads his story “The Queen of Bad Influences,” from the June 16, 2025, issue of the magazine. Shepard, a winner of the Rea Award for the Short Story, is the author of thirteen books of fiction, including the novels “The Book of Aron” and “Phase Six” and the story collection “The World to Come.” Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Louise Erdrich reads her story “Love of My Days,” from the June 2, 2025, issue of the magazine. Erdrich is the author of more than two dozen works of fiction, nonfiction, and poetry, including the novels “The Round House,” which won the National Book Award in 2012, “The Night Watchman,” which won the Pulitzer Prize in 2021, and “The Mighty Red,” which was published last year. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Patricia Lockwood reads her story “Fairy Pools,” from the May 26, 2025, issue of the magazine. Lockwood is a poet, essayist, and novelist. Her memoir “Priestdaddy,” which came out in 2017, won the Thurber Prize, and her first novel, “No One Is Talking About This,” won the Dylan Thomas Prize in 2022. A new novel, “Will There Ever Be Another You,” from which this story was adapted, will come out later this year. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Lillian Fishman reads her story, “Travesty,” from the May 12 & 19, 2025, issue of the magazine. Fishman is the author of the novel “Acts of Service,” which was published in 2022. She is currently at work on her second novel, from which this story was adapted. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Saïd Sayrafiezadeh reads his story “Nocturnal Creatures,” from the May 5, 2025, issue of the magazine. Sayrafiezadeh is the author of several plays, the memoir “When Skateboards Will Be Free,” and the story collections “Brief Encounters with the Enemy” and “American Estrangement,” a finalist for the L.A. Times Book Prize, which was published in 2021. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices