Maya Binyam Loses the Illusion

“The sound of the waves that had initially seemed so calming were suddenly the soundtrack to an ongoing nightmare.”

Maya Binyam is the author of Hangman, which was named a 2024 National Book Foundation “5 under 35” honoree, received the Rosenthal Family Foundation Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and was longlisted for the Women’s Prize, the Mark Twain American Voice in Literature Award, and the Dublin Literary Award. She is the recipient of the 2025 Bard Fiction Prize. Her work has appeared in the Paris Review, the New Yorker, Best American Short Stories, and elsewhere. She is an advisory editor of the Paris Review. She lives in Los Angeles.