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This week’s story, “ Intimacy ,” is about a writer’s friendship with an older author and his wife. When did you start thinking about their interactions? Did you know from the outset that the author’s wife would play such a central role in the story?

Last summer, I was working on a lecture on the short-story form and found that I had very little to say about stories in general. I could only think about the individual experience of writing or reading one, but couldn’t extrapolate from these instances. So I decided to write a story in parallel to the lecture, to try and “catch” myself in the act. I told you in

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