Samantha Bee quickly established herself as having one of the most unique and sharp comedic voices on television. Born and raised in Toronto, Canada, Bee joined The Daily Show with Jon Stewart's "Best F#@king News Team" on Comedy Central in 2003. Bee departed The Daily Show in 2015 and currently holds the title for being the longest-serving regular Daily Show correspondent of all time. In 2016, Bee received global recognition from the success of her very own weekly late-night comedy series, Full Frontal with Samantha Bee, which ran for seven seasons on TBS. Full Frontal offered a unique satirical take on weekly news and explored important stories that had been largely overlooked by more traditional media outlets. Full Frontal received rave reviews, critical acclaim, and garnered 12 Emmy nominations and 2 Emmy wins. In a landscape of male late-night talk show hosts, critics have appreciated Bee's "fiery and fierce" delivery (The New York Times) and have embraced Full Frontal as a "daring, innovative addition to the late-night slate" (Entertainment Weekly). Bee and her husband, Jason Jones, co-created the half-hour comedy series The Detour, which ran for four seasons on TBS. The Detour, which starred Jones, was inspired by their personal lives and followed Nate (Jones), Robin (Natalie Zea), and their two kids, as they traveled the world in a series of misadventures. Bee is the author of the essay collection I Know I Am, But What Are You? and has been included as one of Time 100's Most Influential People. In 2018, Bee announced her new production company, Swimsuit Competition, co-founded with Full Frontal producer Kristen Everman. Swimsuit Competition aims to create inclusive, narrative and documentary television. Bee embarked on her first national tour, Your Favorite Woman: The Joy of Sex Education, where she completed a 17-city run including sold-out dates at The Kennedy Center in Washington, DC, The Newmark Theatre in Portland, OR, and New Jersey’s Victoria Theatre. The show is presented under Samantha Bee and Kristen Everman’s production banner, Swimsuit Competition, and produced by Kim Burdges. Currently, Bee is performing her one-woman show, How To Survive Menopause, across the nation. The show originated at the Audible Theater’s Minetta Lane Theatre and is available as an Audible Original.

Suleika Jaouad is the author of the New York Times bestselling books Between Two Kingdoms, which has been translated into more than twenty languages, and The Book of Alchemy. She wrote the Emmy Award–winning New York Times column and video series “Life, Interrupted,” and her essays and feature stories have appeared in The New York Times Magazine, The Atlantic, The Guardian, and Vogue, among others. She is also the subject, along with husband Jon Batiste, of the Oscar-nominated documentary American Symphony—a portrait of two artists during a year of extreme highs and lows. A visual artist, her large-scale watercolors are the focus of several upcoming exhibitions. She is also the creator of the Isolation Journals, a weekly newsletter and global community that harnesses creativity as a tool to navigate life’s interruptions.

George Saunders is the author of thirteen books, including the novel Lincoln in the Bardo, which won the Man Booker Prize, and five collections of stories, including Tenth of December, which was a finalist for the National Book Award, and the recent collection Liberation Day (selected by former President Obama as one of his ten favorite books of 2022). Three of Saunders’ books—Pastoralia, Tenth of December, and Lincoln in the Bardo—were chosen for the New York Times list of the 100 Best Books of the 21st Century. Saunders hosts the popular Story Club on Substack, which grew out of his book on the Russian short story, A Swim in a Pond in the Rain. In 2013, he was named one of the world’s 100 Most Influential People by Time. He teaches in the creative writing program at Syracuse University. Vigil was published today.