Audiophile, by Evan Morgan Williams

Prose, chapbook, 44 pages, from Bottlecap Features. Carrie, a teenage girl immersed in peak audiophile culture of the 1970s, is stricken with severe and sudden hearing loss. On the cusp of a sexual awakening, she grapples with the loss of all that has been taken from her, even as her older sister enjoys mightily the succulent pleasures of the senses. When a mysterious wealthy customer enters the hi-fi store where the sisters work as salesgirls, Carrie finally gets a chance to feel her own awakening, even as the last of her hearing is fading away. Will she take the chance? Will it be everything she was promised? Is anyone else’s life of pleasure any better than hers? The story’s narrator is reliable and retrospective, taking a long look back on a life balanced by precarious oppositions, hope versus loss, innocence versus disappointment, and lush auditory detail versus complete silence. Readers who grew up in the seventies will enjoy a trip down memory lane: towering loudspeakers, orange crates of 12” vinyl, and brown paneling and macrame. Younger readers, their ears trained on the tinny notes of earbuds and mp3 files, will be initiated into the obscure arts of the audiophile. Evan Morgan Williams is the recipient of a 2024 Oregon Literary Fellowship. He is the author of four collections of stories: Thorn (BkMk Press, 2014), Canyons (2018), Stories of the New West (Main Street Rag, 2021), and The Divide (Cornerstone Press, 2026). He has published over 75 stories in journals including Kenyon Review, Witness, Alaska Quarterly Review, and Zyzzyva. He holds an MFA from the University of Montana (1991) and a residency at Dorland Mountain Arts (2025). A member of the Deaf/HOH community, he is retired after 29 years of teaching in a public school.