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Articles by Peter Orner
End Notes: Fat City
Peter Orner At this hour of the morning, the park is populated by reclining bodies, unemployed day laborers: peach and strawberry pickers, tomato-plant thinners, onion toppers, men who weren’t hired at the predawn shape-up. The men are Black, white, Mexican, Filipino, Chinese. About forty in total, and they’re getting a little shade under the park’s many leafy trees. Still early, it’s already hot. Orange city-maintenance trucks roll up.
Flash Fiction Series: ‘Olema’
They got married in Olema. They’d both known ahead of time it was a mistake. A lot of couples do. But the spot had been well chosen, idyllic in a shabby, dust-coated West Marin County sort of way. A pair of ancient apple trees sprawled behind the old inn, kin to the apple trees Robert Haas once wrote about in a poem they’d both read and loved. They’d even considered reading that poem at the ceremony but it didn’t quite fit. Or maybe it fit too well.
The Lonely Voice: 'The Typewriter' by Dorothy West
A man spends his days as a janitor, but in his imagination, he is someone else. In Dorothy West’s “The Typewriter,” a young girl’s typing exercises give her father an unexpected escape from the disappointments of his life. As Millie takes dictation, her father invents letters from a persona he creates — one “J. Lucius Jones” — a wealthy businessman who speaks the language of success, power and money. For a few minutes at a time after work each day, the drudgery of his real life falls away.
The Lonely Voice: 'Able, Baker, Charlie, Dog' by Stephanie Vaughn
Some stories about childhood are really stories about the adults we become — and about the things we understand differently when we look back. Stephanie Vaughn’s “Able, Baker, Charlie, Dog” is a beautifully complicated story about memory, family and a daughter trying to understand her father. The story’s narrator, Gemma, looks back on her childhood as the daughter of an Army officer, moving with her family from place to place.
The Lonely Voice: 'The Claw' by José Emilio Pacheco
Perhaps one of the hardest things to live with is the life we imagine we might have had. We can spend years looking at someone else and wondering what they were given that we were not — beauty, love, opportunity, happiness. And over time, that comparison can become its own kind of prison. José Emilio Pacheco’s “La Zarpa,” or “The Claw,” is a haunting story about what happens when envy takes hold of a life and refuses to let go.
The Lonely Voice: 'The Boat' by Alistair MacLeod
What do we inherit from the places we come from? A landscape. A language. A way of seeing the world. Maybe even a sense of who we are meant to become. In Alistair MacLeod’s short story “The Boat,” a young man grows up on the rugged coast of Cape Breton Island, where his family’s life is shaped by the sea. The ocean provides for them, but it also demands something in return. It becomes a symbol of the ties that hold a family together — and the forces that can pull them apart.
The Lonely Voice: ‘Asigh’ by Mary Lavin
The focus on this episode of the podcast is a masterclass in domestic tension and psychological confinement: the 1959 short story "Asigh" by the incomparable Mary Lavin. If you are new to Mary Lavin, you are in for a revelation—and we think you will become a fan of her work. She wrote at a time when Irish literature was heavily dominated by male perspectives — writers like Joyce and Beckett. Lavin carved out her own space where she could build worlds around the inner lives of women.
The Lonely Voice: ‘The Tea Ceremony’ by Gina Berriault
Texas Public Radio had the rare and wonderful opportunity to host acclaimed author Peter Orner at a special event last January. After over five years of collaborating on "The Lonely Voice," we were all in the same room — in person — while discussing his latest novel, "The Gossip Columnist's Daughter." We also recorded a couple of episodes of "The Lonely Voice." We always go back to short stories. We had to. How often does one get to sit in the same room with Peter Orner and talk about stories?
'La reina Esther': una judía huérfana, descarada y valiente capitanea la nueva novela de John Irving
John Irving. Foto: Katherine Holland Peter Orner Publicada 20 abril 2026 00:47h Soy monitor en un campamento de verano en las afueras de Wisconsin en julio de 1990. Ya han apagado las luces y me faltan quince páginas para terminar una desgastada edición de bolsillo de Las normas de la casa de la sidra, de John Irving (Exeter, Nuevo Hampshire, 1942), la primera novela que recuerdo haber leído con la intensidad de quien se aferra a un salvavidas.
The Lonely Voice: 'Train Dreams' by Denis Johnson
Alex Gordon, a Chicago-based editor and journalist, joins the program. He is the perfect guest host to join The Lonely Voice for an episode about Train Dreams by Denis Johnson. This is a podcast where we celebrate the short story. That means we explore the worlds that authors build in just a few pages. We’ve taken that idea to heart so much, we’ve even veered before into one episode about poetry.
The Lonely Voice: 'Gómez Palacio' by Roberto Bolaño
On this episode Peter Orner and Yvette Benavides discuss the story “Gómez Palacio” by Roberto Bolaño. This is a story selected by Peter Orner for this episode. It’s a curious choice — but not altogether surprising as it seems to be a favorite story for the legions of aficionados of Bolaño’s stories. For many of us, the favorite Bolaño story is any one that we happen to be reading.
The Lonely Voice: 'Berries' and 'At Night' by Varlam Shalamov
On this episode, Peter Orner joined us in person in the TPR studios in San Antonio. On this episode Yvette Benavides and Peter Orner discuss stories by the Russian writer, Varlam Shalamov. He was a journalist and a writer. In 1936, he was arrested for counterrevolutionary activities and sent to the Soviet Gulag. After surviving 15 years in prison campus, he was released and would go on to write short fictional stories that reflect the years he spent in the Gulag.
The Lonely Voice: Four stories by Mavis Gallant
This is a special 50th episode of the podcast. To celebrate, we have one of our favorites — Mavis Gallant — and not just one, but four stories. There’s a series of four Mavis Gallant stories that might be presented to us in various sequences and that feature the stories of three characters — "Edouard, Juliette, and Lena." We hope that’s clear. Four stories. Three characters. Edouard narrates throughout.
The Lonely Voice: 'Out with the Old' by Richard Yates
“Out with the Old" by Richard Yates is a New Year's Eve story. It's set on December 31, 1950, in the tuberculosis ward of Mulloy’s Veterans Hospital in New York. Tiny and Jones are patients in the ward — of building seven, to be specific. And it's worth noting. They are in a building that's set apart from the other veterans. In the hospital where each day is like the next, they want to break up the monotony of things during the holiday season.
The Lonely Voice: 'The Loudest Voice' by Grace Paley
We are excited and happy to be talking about a Grace Paley story again. And it’s one we bring to you to coincide with the holidays. Shirley Abramowitz is the “voice” of the title. She is “the loudest voice” in the school. The sixth-grade teacher, Mr. Hilton, knows this about her, indeed summons her and gives her the role of a kind of narrator of the Christmas pageant. Never mind that Shirley is Jewish—as are many of the other kids in the program.
The Lonely Voice: 'Fun with a Stranger' by Richard Yates
Yvette Benavides and Peter Orner discuss “Fun with a Stranger” by Richard Yates. As with a previous episode, the focus again is a school story — with a teacher and her third grade class. In the previous episode, William Maxwell’s “Love” helped us see the ways a protagonist learned a lesson about love through his fifth grade teacher, Miss Vera Brown. He learned about love — that it blooms in beautiful and unforgettable ways. Miss Brown was pretty, gentle, and compassionate.
The Lonely Voice: ‘Love’ by William Maxwell
What do you expect from a short story with such a title as “Love”? It’s not about familial or romantic love. It isn’t about a friendship either. This is a story about a teacher. Sure, the narrator seems to have been infatuated with the teacher—a young woman named Miss Vera Brown—when he was in the fifth grade. His nostalgic recollection of her classroom imbues here with a kind of saintliness. She was angelic in his telling.
The Lonely Voice: 'Panteón de Dolores' and 'Emergency Room Notebook, 1977' by Lucia Berlin
Reading the stories of Lucia Berlin can be an intense experience. The pacing of each moves with suddenness but then also lingers for brief moments of beauty and light juxtaposed with something unseemly and sad. Characters want connection and love—and sometimes settle for something else that can lead to bad decisions—broken hearts, addiction. Generally acknowledged are the autobiographical details in Berlin’s stories—the alcoholism and addiction, the humor and the heartbreak.
Book Review: ‘Queen Esther,’ by John Irving
You have a preview view of this article while we are checking your access. When we have confirmed access, the full article content will load. Fiction His new novel returns to a familiar setting to examine antisemitism, 20th-century history and nontraditional parenting. John Irving’s new novel is “Queen Esther.”Credit...Markian Lozowchuk/Redux Nov. 2, 2025, 5:00 a.m. ET QUEEN ESTHER, by John Irving I’m a counselor at a summer camp in the upper reaches of Wisconsin in July 1990.
The Lonely Voice: 'The Rain' and 'Elegy of Fortinbras' by Zbigniew Herbert
On this episode, Peter Orner and Yvette Benavides welcome the poet Nicholas Regiacorte to the Lonely Voice clubhouse to discuss two poems by Zbigniew Herbert— “The Rain” and “Elegy of Fortinbras.” Grace Paley famously compared poetry to short fiction. She once wrote that, "A short story is closer to the poem than to the novel (I've said that a million times) and when it's very, very short... should be read like a poem. That is slowly." The reverse can be true, and a poem can be read like a story.
The Lonely Voice: 'The Death of Elsa Baskoleit' and 'Parting' by Heinrich Böll
On this episode, Peter Orner and Yvette Benavides discuss “The Death of Elsa Baskoleit” by Heinrich Böll. And stay tuned for a bonus discussion about another Heinrich Böll story, “Parting.” On "The Lonely Voice" podcast, where we celebrate the short story, we were bound to get around to Heinrich Böll. What took us so long? He was a master of the 20th century short story–and he was prolific.
The Gossip Columnist's Daughter
For some six decades, Irv Kupcinet, universally known as “Kup,” was a household name in Chicago. Six days each week he produced a celebrity gossip column for the Chicago Sun-Times that was syndicated to more than 100 newspapers. He hosted a television talk show for 27 years and counted Bob Hope, Sammy Davis, Jr., Bing Crosby and a host of other stars among his friends.
The Gossip Columnist's Daughter
Peter Orner returns to his beloved Chicago with a riveting, rule-breaking, genre-bending, and multi-textured new novel of generational ache, The Gossip Columnist’s Daughter. The year is 1963. Days after JFK’s assassination, Karyn (a.k.a. Cookie) Kupcinet, the daughter of gossip columnist, local celebrity and yak-about-town, Irv Kupcinent, is found dead in her Hollywood apartment. A nepo baby, Cookie was a budding starlet, with addictions and angst to match.
The Lonely Voice: 'Nine Months Since Forever' & 'The Giver of Nicknames' by Rémy Ngamije
On this episode of The Lonely Voice, super special guest, Rémy Ngamije, joins in to discuss his story, “Nine Months Since Forever” found in his collection Only Stars Know the Meaning of Space: A Literary Mixtape. We also share a short bonus conversation about another story, “The Giver of Nicknames.” Rémy Ngamije is an award-winning Rwandan-born Namibian author. He's also the author of the award-winning The Eternal Audience of One and the book we’ll talk about today.
The Lonely Voice: 'The Origin of Sadness' & 'Real Losses, Imaginary Gains' by Wright Morris
On this episode we’re talking about Wright Morris. We’ll focus on two of his stories from his Collected Stories: 1948-1986, published in 1986. We’ll start off with “The Origin of Sadness”—and then stay tuned for a short bonus conversation about “Real Losses, Imaginary Gains.” My own fascination with Wright Morris started probably 30 years after this story collection was published.
Fiction: ‘Cookie’
She was born Roberta Lynn. She was the daughter of my grandparents’ closest friends. When she was three, she handed her father a cookie and said, “Here’s a cookie for your cookie.” From then on, home in Chicago, she would always be Cookie. In high school she called herself Bobbe. It was only after she got serious about acting a few years later that she named herself Karyn. She thought it went better with Kupcinet, that the repetition of the hard K made it easier to remember.
The Lonely Voice: 'Clara' by Roberto Bolaño
Peter Orner is in Chile for the Cátedra Abierta en Homenaje a Roberto Bolaño con Peter Orner—a lecture honoring Roberto Bolaño sponsored by the Universidad Diego Portales. So though we didn’t want to impose on Peter while he was away, it also seemed a good time to pay tribute to Roberto Bolaño in one more way—here on "The Lonely Voice with Peter Orner." Bolaño was born in Chile—and though he lived in Mexico with his family for a time and then in Spain, he is generally considered a Chilean writer.
THE GOSSIP COLUMNIST'S DAUGHTER
A wild ride and an immersive Chicago novel, in which the town threatens to toddle off its axis. In the wake of the JFK assassination, another death shakes Chicago. Before “true crime” and “cold case” became cultural bywords, the real-life mystery surrounding Karyn “Cookie” Kupcinet obsessed her hometown.
The Lonely Voice: 'Oh, Joseph, I'm So Tired' by Richard Yates
“Oh, Joseph, I’m So Tired” is considered to be one of the best stories by Richard Yates, a writer who perhaps didn’t enjoy a lot of accolades when he was alive and publishing his work. One of the reasons this podcast even exists is precisely because of authors like Richard Yates. Maybe most people would say, “never heard of him” about Yates and his novels and stories.
The Lonely Voice: 'Goodbye and Good Luck' & 'Living' by Grace Paley
Grace Paley's "Goodbye and Good Luck" is a story that has been very often anthologized. On this episode, Peter Orner and Yvette Benavides shine a light on the story's ubiquity and popularity and discuss the beloved author. If you talk about Paley, you have to talk about voice. But you also talk about compassion. Paley's characters face conflict and tragedy and deep sorrow and loneliness on any given day.
The Lonely Voice: A NEW podcast about short stories with acclaimed author Peter Orner
The Lonely Voice is hosted by acclaimed author Peter Orner and TPR contributor Yvette Benavides. The podcast is inspired by their shared passion for the short story. On each episode they discuss a story, raise interesting questions, share details about the author’s life and more. Listeners will feel like they are eavesdropping on a couple of people who really love stories.
Peter Orner | Untitled
Twenty-five or so years ago I sublet a room in a small apartment between Dupont Circle and Adam’s Morgan, at 18th and T. My roommate, technically my landlord, since I paid my rent to her, used to have loud sex with her boyfriend. I was a year out of college, miserable, lonely, and pathetic, and those two went at it at all hours like orangutans. I don’t think they did it torment me. I think they couldn’t help themselves. And wasn’t there joy in all that moaning and grunting?
A 'reluctant' memoirist offers a mindful meditation on storytelling
Writer Peter Orner misses San Francisco. “I miss Charlie’s Cafe in Precita Park. I miss walking the streets of Bernal Heights and the Mission,” said the former San Francisco State University professor, author of seven books. He’s talking over Zoom from his office at Dartmouth College, where a hundred books are piled willy-nilly on a bench behind him, bottoms-up, titles indecipherable. Four years ago, Orner moved to Vermont to become head of Dartmouth’s creative writing department.
Peter Orner and Emma Cline Discuss Endings, Memory, and Writing Against Classification
Peter Orner’s new book, Still No Word From You, reads like a full expression of a mind, in a different way than a novel might be an expression of a mind. There isn’t the artifice or costume of fiction, in these 107 short pieces, but there isn’t the blunt assumed authority of nonfiction, either. The tone is intimate, digressive, and personal, and the cumulative effect is a total immersion in the author’s way of seeing.
Why it can seem easier to weep for Don Quixote than your own father
Peter Orner’s previous essay collection, Am I Alone Here?, was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award for Criticism. Photo by Pawel Kruk In Peter Orner’s Still No Word from You, literature and life are inextricably intertwined, each illuminating the other. Orner’s latest collection is part memoir, part criticism, transcending genre, or attempting to.
“In This Country, We Murder; Then We Honor.” Peter Orner on a Death in the Town His Family Loved
A decade ago, in Fall River, Massachusetts, my mother’s hometown, the water in the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Pool was so murky that a woman drowned without anybody noticing. She’d gone down the water slide and hit her head. She sank and remained unseen until, two days later, her body rose to the surface. Some boys who’d climbed the fence to swim after hours, at night, discovered her floating. I don’t tell this to humiliate Fall River. Plenty of people have already done that.
Ghost Stories, by Peter Orner
From Still No Word from You, which was published last month by Catapult. On the black-and-white TV in the kitchen, my mother and I watched Richard Nixon’s helicopter slowly rise. My mother stood at the sink doing dishes. At one point, she stopped scrubbing but left her hands in the dishwater. The kitchen of the house on Hazel Avenue. The house no longer exists. It is less about her expression than that her hands remained in the water but were no longer scrubbing the dishes.
Peter Orner with Daniel Gumbiner / Still No Word from You
Body: Booksmith is thrilled to host longtime favorite Peter Orner for his new book, Still No Word from You: Notes in the Margin. He'll be in conversation Daniel Gumbiner, author The Boatbuilder and editor of The Believer magazine. Join us! Please note: > Safety: ID and proof of full vaccination, including at least one booster shot, will be required at the door.
Other People’s Partings
By Peter Orner September 13, 2022 First Person So many accounts of Chekhov’s death, many of them exaggerated, some outright bogus. The only indisputable thing is that he died at forty-four. That’s etched in stone in Moscow. I like to read them anyway. I’m not alone. Chekhov death fanatics abound. His last sip of champagne. The whole thing about the popping of the cork, I forget what exactly. The enigmatic words he likely never said: Has the sailor left? But wouldn’t it be wonderful if he had said them?
The Milky Way: An Autobiography of Our Galaxy
Moiya McTier. Grand Central, $27 (256p) ISBN 978-1-538-75415-3 Astrophysicist McTier delivers in her debut a delightful report on the Milky Way’s inner workings, told from the galaxy’s imagined point of view. McTier describes in her foreword how, growing up as a Black girl in rural Appalachia, she was enamored with space, and studying it made her feel connected to people and nature, and that theme of the harmony between humans and the planet pervades what follows.
And You May Find Yourself: Confessions of a Late-Blooming Gen-X Weirdo
Sari Botton. Heliotrope, $18.50 trade paper (212p) ISBN 978-1-942762-99-7 Former Longreads editor Botton debuts with an introspective collection of essays about the joys and pains of feeling like a misfit.
Still No Word from You: Notes in the Margin
Peter Orner. Catapult, $26 (320p) ISBN 978-1-64622-136-3 Pushcart Prize–winning fiction writer Orner (Maggie Brown & Others) brings his lyrical, mosaic style to the story of his own life in this gorgeous and contemplative memoir. Blending photographs, family lore, speculation, and literary musings, Orner’s nonlinear narrative weaves through elliptical reflections and faint memories from his 1970s childhood to the sorrows and delights of his adulthood.
Path Lit by Lightning: The Life of Jim Thorpe
David Maraniss. Simon & Schuster, $29.99 (608p) ISBN 978-1-4767-4841-2 Biographer Maraniss (When Pride Still Mattered) trains his keen eye on the remarkable career of Jim Thorpe (1887–1953), “an archetype, the great athlete, and a stereotype, the romanticized noble Indian...
American Cartel: Inside the Battle to Bring Down the Opioid Industry
Scott Higham and Sari Horwitz. Twelve, $30 (368p) ISBN 978-1-5387-3720-0 In this brilliant account, Pulitzer Prize–winning Washington Post reporters Higham and Horwitz (Finding Chandra: A True Washington Murder Mystery) convey how America’s largest drug distribution companies facilitated the opioid epidemic. To frame their complex narrative, the authors focus on two individuals: Joseph Rannazzisi, who led the DEA unit responsible for policing the pharmaceutical industry, and Paul T.
Should All Drugs Be Legalized?: A Primer for the 21st Century
Mattha Busby. Thames & Hudson, $18.95 trade paper (144p) ISBN 978-0-500-29568-7 Journalist Busby delivers a brisk and informative introduction to the case for decriminalizing drugs.
Notes in the Margin
Ferlinghetti In my mother’s battered copy of Ferlinghetti’s A Coney Island of the Mind, she wrote a single word in the margin of page 29. Ferlinghetti’s nearby lines are Don’t let that horse eat that violin cried Chagall’s mother But he kept right on painting A bit to the right of the word painting, in faint but, after more than sixty years, still-readable pencil, in my mother’s distinct all-caps handwriting: “YES!” A Coney Island of the Mind was everywhere in the late ’50s and ’60s.
This Boy We Made: A Memoir of Motherhood, Genetics, and Facing the Unknown
Taylor Harris. Catapult, $26 (272p) ISBN 978-1-948226-84-4 Essayist Harris weaves a medical mystery, love story, parenting memoir, and tale of survival in her stunning debut. When Harris’s sweet-natured 22-month-old boy, Tophs, started showing a host of inexplicable symptoms—including hypoglycemia, developmental delays, and speech and language difficulties—she was forced to reckon with the ways in which his health issues stoked anxiety issues that she’d spent most of her life battling.
Barbara, Detroit, 1966
This is the sixth story in this summer’s online Flash Fiction series. You can read the entire series, and our Flash Fiction stories from previous years, here. And still the rabbi talks. The renowned, beloved, silver-tongued Morris Adler, “the most quoted rabbi in America,” intones, expounds on Abraham Lincoln in honor of the sixteenth President’s birthday. Barbara’s paying no attention.
Four Stories, by Peter Orner | Conjunctions — The forum for innovative writing
The following is one of four stories by Peter Orner featured in Conjunctions:76, Fortieth Anniversary Issue. Mr. Sandy He’d have to be long dead now. He drove a small brown car, an upright two-door Dodge. Like a little hat with wheels. Mr. Sandy. Lessons were at six thirty on Wednesday nights. This went on for a couple of years. I had no competence or interest. The piano sat facing the front lawn and Mr. Sandy and I spent a lot of time looking out the window.
Notes in the Margin (Part VI)
Pasolini Pier Paolo Pasolini championed the little guy, the honest poor, those he called the “lumpen proletariat.” He never pretended to be one of them. A middle-class kid himself (his father was in the military), Pasolini moved to Rome after being fired from a teaching job in his hometown. He’d been charged with “corruption of minors and obscene acts in a public space.” They hounded him out of the Communist Party.
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