All Write!

Crystal Dickinson won the Theatre World Award for her Broadway debut in the 2012 production of Clybourne Park. She subsequently appeared in You Can’t Take It With You on Broadway in 2014, A Raisin in the Sun at the Two River Theater, and The Low Road at the Public Theater. Her film and television credits include I Origins, The Good Wife, Feed the Beast, New Amsterdam, and recurring roles on The Chi and For Life. Dickinson has taught at Stella Adler Studio, Spelman College, Pace University, Princeton University, the Juilliard School, NYU, and both of her alma maters, University of Illinois and Seton Hall. Dickinson was recently featured in Lessons in Survival at the Vineyard Theatre and starred in Cullud Wattah at the Public.

Philip Estrera is a NYC-based actor whose theater credits include Strangers in the Night with Hunger & Thirst Theatre, Monstress with the American Conservatory Theater, and Orphan of Zhao at La Jolla Playhouse. He was recently in the Sesame Street Thanksgiving special as Anton the bus driver, which introduced the first Asian American puppet to the series. He also narrated the short story “The Water That Falls on You From Nowhere” for Macmillan Publishing, and can be seen in episodes of Blue Bloods and the web series Characteristically. You can see him in NYC this spring as the god Apollo in the new play, Discus. Estrera is a graduate of the American Conservatory Theater’s MFA program.

Dawn Akemi Saito is an actor, writer, director and teacher. Her performance credits include: Insects in Heat, Suns Are Suns, Blood Cherries, HA, Knock on the Sky, Suicide Forest, Hiroshima Maiden, Arden/Ardennes, My House Is Collapsing Toward One Side, and Deshima. She has also performed at St. Ann’s Warehouse, BAM, Japan Society, and New York Theater Workshop. Her own multi-disciplinary works have been performed at the Walker Art Center, Flynn Center for the Performing Arts, Orpheum Theatre in Austria, the Whitney Museum, Dance Theater Workshop, New York Theater Workshop, LaMaMa, New World Theater, the Public Theater, and Aaron Davis Hall. Dawn is an Associate Clinical Professor at Fordham University/Lincoln Center, is on the movement faculty at Juilliard, and serves as co-director of the Summer Theatre Devising Intensive at Bard College in Berlin, Germany.

Madeline Cohen is the Education Director for Symphony Space’s Arts Education and Adult Literacy programs, as well as the director of Symphony Space’s Thalia Kids Book Club Camp. She has been working in arts education for over thirty years as a teaching artist, staff development leader, and consultant at the Lincoln Center Institute, the United Federation of Teachers, and Teachers College, among others. In addition, she is a costume designer.

Lois Beardslee is a Native American storyteller and the author of several books, including Words Like Thunder, The Women’s Warrior Society, Lies to Live By, and Leelanau Earth Stories. She performs, teaches, and demonstrates traditional arts to thousands of people each year at museums, schools, and universities. Beardslee’s paintings and limited edition prints exemplify contemporary Woodland Indian style while embracing traditional lifestyles and symbolism. Her work is exhibited in public and private collections worldwide. She is one of the “Sisters of the Great Lakes” and a member of the Great Lakes Indian Artists’ Association. Her father is Lacandon and her maternal grandmother is Ojibwa. Raised in northern Michigan, Beardslee is a cherry farmer in Leelanau County.

Roberto Fernández is a Cuban-American writer and scholar. He is the author of many novels in English and in Spanish, including La vida es un special, Raining Backwards, Holy Radishes!, En la ocho y la doce, Entre dos aguas, El Príncipe y la bella cubana, and the short story collections Cuentos sin rumbo and La montaña rusa. Fernández’s short stories have appeared widely in magazines and anthologies. He teaches Spanish and literature at Florida State University, where he is the Dorothy Lois Breen Hoffman Professor of Modern Languages and Linguistics.

Eve Merriam (1916–1992) was a poet and playwright. Her first book, Family Circle, was selected for the Yale Series of Younger Poets. Her children’s poetry books include There Is No Rhyme for Silver, It Doesn't Always Have to Rhyme, The Inner City Mother Goose, Catch a Little Rhyme, Finding a Poem, Out Loud, and Rainbow Writing. The controversial Inner City Mother Goose, which Merriam named "just about the most banned book in the country," was the basis for a 1971 Broadway musical, and a second musical production, Street Dreams, in 1982. In 1981, she was named the winner of the NCTE Award for Excellence in Poetry for Children.

Naomi Shihab Nye is a poet, songwriter, and novelist. Her works include the novels Habibi; The Turtle of Oman; and Going, Going; and the poetry collections Hugging the Jukebox, Red Suitcase, Fuel, You and Yours, Transfer, Words Under the Words, and The Tiny Journalist, among others. She has edited numerous poetry anthologies, including This Same Sky. Her work has been awarded four Pushcart Prizes, the Jane Addams Children's Book Award, the Paterson Poetry Prize, the Lon Tinkle Award for Lifetime Achievement from the Texas Institute of Letters, among other honors. Nye is currently the Poetry Foundation's Young People's Poet Laureate. Her most recent work is the easy collection Never in a Hurry.

Julie Otsuka is the author of When the Emperor Was Divine, a New York Times Notable Book, and The Buddha in the Attic, winner of the PEN/Faulkner Award and France’s Prix Femina Etranger and a finalist for the National Book Award. The Buddha in the Attic was also selected as a New York Times Notable Book, a San Francisco Chronicle and Boston Globe Best Book of the Year, and was named in the top ten books of the year in both Library Journal and Vogue. Her fiction has been published in Granta, Harper’s, The Best American Short Stories 2012, and The Best American Nonrequired Reading 2012. Her latest novel, The Swimmers, will be published in February 2022.

Samuel Langhorne Clemens, better known by his pen name Mark Twain (1835–1910), published more than 30 books, hundreds of short stories and essays, and gave lecture tours around the world. His books include The Innocents Abroad, Roughing It, The Mysterious Stranger, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, and Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. Renowned for his wit and satire, Twain has been lauded as the first great American humorist.