Kiran Desai reads her story “An Unashamed Proposal,” from the August 11, 2025, issue of the magazine. Desai is the author of the novels “Hullabaloo in the Guava Orchard” and “The Inheritance of Loss,” which won the Booker Prize in 2006. A new novel, “The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny,” from which this story was adapted, will be published this fall.

Anne Enright reads her story “The Bridge Stood Fast,” from the August 4, 2025, issue of the magazine. Enright has published eleven books of fiction, including the story collection “Yesterday’s Weather,” and the novels “The Gathering,” which won the Man Booker Prize, “Actress,” and “The Wren, The Wren.”

Mona Awad reads her story “The Chartreuse,” from the July 28, 2025, issue of the magazine. Awad is the author of four books of fiction, including “13 Ways of Looking at a Fat Girl,” which won the Amazon Best First Novel Award, and “Rouge,” which was published in 2023. Her new novel, “We Love You, Bunny,” will come out in September.

Clare Sestanovich reads her story “Natural History,” from the July 21, 2025, issue of the magazine. Sestanovich is the author of the story collection “Objects of Desire,” which came out in 2021 and was a finalist for the PEN/Robert W. Bingham Prize, and the novel “Ask Me Again,” which was published last year.

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.

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.

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.

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.”

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.

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.”