LISTEN TO DAVID SEDARIS READ MIRANDA JULY’S SHORT STORY ‘ROY SPIVEY’. IT JUST MIGHT CHANGE YOUR LIFE.

I bought Miranda July’s collection of short stories, ‘No One Belongs Here More Than You’ when it came out. I probably read it a couple years later. I really liked it. She has a way of making small encounters seem like they’re bursting with meaning—all without pretense. That’s very hard to do, of course, so I respect her work deeply. That’s probably why I wanted more when I finished the book. Like it was missing that one story that really spoke to me. That’s a lot to ask of an author, I know, but her work is so personal, it seems only natural that I have this request, no?

Well, here we are some five years later and I’ve finally got my wish. It turns out that Ms. July wrote a story for the book that was never included in it. It’s called ‘Roy Spivey’ and was published in the New Yorker a couple years after the book came out. Of course I didn’t know about it at the time, but I’m not complaining. It’s all good news now because The New Yorker has it again, but this time it’s read aloud by another one of my favorite authors, David Sedaris.

The magazine describes ‘Roy Spivey’ as a “short story about a woman who sits beside a movie star on an airplane.” After he’s done reading the piece, David and The New Yorker’s fiction editor Deborah Treisman discuss. That’s pretty much it. It’s funny and brilliant.

Jump in and enjoy.