Five or six years ago, I was driving with my wife from State College, PA to Washington, D.C. We had the radio on. A woman’s voice was reading out the self-descriptions provided by young, college-aged sperm donors.

Then, the road cut between mountains and we lost the radio signal. And I made a note that I would come back and try to get the transcript of the show. (I never did.) The episode was called “The Missing Parents Bureau” and it played on This American Life. In April this year the episode was rebroadcast. I finally got a chance to download it today.

The real pleasure of listening to this episode was getting to learn about Miriam Toews. This is the description of a 17-minute story in the above episode:

We hear a series of letters that originally appeared on the brief-lived, little-known, but well-loved webzine Open Letters. They’re written by a woman who signs her name as “X” and are addressed to the father of her adolescent son. X has no idea where to send the letters, but she keeps writing.

Since the letters’ original publication on the Internet, X has decided to reveal her identity. Her name is Miriam Toews, and she’s author of the book Swing Low, A Life. Her letters were read for us by Alexa Junge.

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