The New Yorker Fiction Image Request

Happy to have an image in The New Yorker fiction section this week.



I love getting The New Yorker fiction image request emails. The descriptions of the image they are looking to accompany the writing are always so much fun to read and so often the most perfect and beautiful thing I will read that day. Here are some of my favorite New Yorker image request descriptions from recent years. I originally made a story out of the selections which perhaps I will post later, but there were just too many good ones to leave out. Winogrand once said, "There is nothing as mysterious as a fact clearly described."


-A man walking a white pit bull in the city – ideally with one front leg missing
-A woman hiding behind a door - ideally with a red umbrella
-A charred grilled cheese sandwich – the bread is blackened, but the cheese hardly melted.
-A man smoking a cigarette outside looking at the stars
-A woman’s shoes covered with snow standing on a braided rug
-South end of the strip where there are cheap motels, fast-food, pawnshops, bail bonds, storefront churches, sprawling parking lots – kids hanging out there
-A table with handmade animals for sale – including a giraffe, and a Noah’s arc.
-A woman in her 40’s – details of aging skin on the face, pale, drawn, covered with too much makeup – heavy blush, dark lipstick – deep reds and purples
-A boat crossing a lake (ideally Prussian blue), either in rain & rough weather or good weather
-A chainsaw in a forest
-Details of female hands drinking coffee in a diner
-A cigarette extinguished under a silver high heel
-A sexy scene seen through a keyhole
-A woman’s hand extended with a blue pill
-A tall, skinny red head outside in the snowstorm in the beams of a trucks headlights – the snow catching in her red hair glowing in the backlight like a halo
-The hotel receptionist behind the bright green glow of the computer screen and with blue lacquered fingernails
-A woman in a wraparound red dress & red heeled toeless sandals on a dusty Irish road
-A Holiday Inn sign in a snow storm on the side of a road – both with and without a “No Vacancy” sign – dark or dusk
-Red roses on a coffin