Against the Odds

Kaczmarek is best known for her role as Lois on “Malcolm in the Middle,” for which she received 7 consecutive Emmy nominations, as well as nominations for the Golden Globe and SAG Awards. Her television career began on “The Paper Chase,” “St. Elsewhere,“ and “Hill Street Blues.” Recent appearances include “The Big Bang Theory” and “This is Us. “ In New York, Kaczmarek has appeared on Broadway and off at Manhattan Theatre Club, Second Stage, the Public Theatre, and New York Theater Workshop. This summer she will appear at the Williamstown Theatre Festival, in the world premiere of Sharyn Rothstein’s “Tell Me I'm Not Crazy.” Among other roles, Kaczmarek appeared as Mary Tyrone in “Long Day's Journey Into Night” at the Geffen Playhouse with Alfred Molina, and as the Stage Manager in “Our Town” with Deaf West Theatre.

Lauren Groff’s “At the Round Earth’s Imagined Corners” takes its title from a sonnet by the seventeenth-century poet and clergyman John Donne. It’s easy to spot its Biblical parallels—it begins with an isolated, mismatched couple living in a lush, snake-infested swamp. The father is harsh, the mother dreamy, and their son learns to trust only numbers, until he finds his way.

Lauren Groff is the author of the novels The Monsters of Templeton, Delicate Edible Birds, a collection of stories, and Arcadia, a New York Times Notable Book. Her third novel, Fates and Furies, was a finalist for the National Book Award in Fiction, the National Book Critics Circle Award, and the Kirkus Award. It won the 2015 American Booksellers’ Association Indies’ Choice Award for Fiction, and was a New York Times Notable book. Groff’s most recent collection of stories, Florida, was released in June 2018, and SELECTED SHORTS will feature a story from that collection, “Flower Hunters,” later this season.

Groff’s work has appeared in journals including the New Yorker, the Atlantic Monthly, Harper’s, Tin House, One Story, and Ploughshares, and in the anthologies 100 Years of the Best American Short Stories, The Pushcart Prize: Best of the Small Presses, PEN/O. Henry Prize Stories, and five editions of the Best American Short Stories.

“At the Round Earth’s Imagined Corners” is read by Amy Ryan, whose films include “Gone Baby Gone,” “Birdman,” and “Beautiful Boy.” On television, she had featured roles in “The Wire,” “The Office,” “In Treatment,” and has appeared recently on “Broad City” and “High Maintenance.”

Keise Laymon’s critically acclaimed essay “How To Slowly Kill Yourself and Others in America: A Remembrance” describes his experiences growing up, as he says “black, and Southern, and imaginative”, in a racist Mississippi community. Laymon is currently the Ottilie Schillig Professor of English and Creative Writing at the University of Mississippi. He served as the Distinguished Visiting Professor of Nonfiction at the University of Iowa in Fall 2017. He is also the author of the novel Long Division, and Heavy: An American Memoir. Heavy, shortlisted for the Andrew Carnegie Medal and the Kirkus Prize, was named one of the Best Books of 2018 by a range of publications including the The Undefeated, New York Times, Publishers Weekly, and The Washington Post. Laymon has written essays, stories and reviews for numerous publications including Esquire, McSweeneys, the New York Times, Virginia Quarterly Review, Granta, NPR, and The Paris Review, among others. But in the tough and candid essay you’ll hear on this program, he admits that he might just as easily have died at 19. Listeners should that this strong work features confrontational scenes that include racial slurs.

“How To Slowly Kill Yourself and Others in America” is read by Brandon J. Dirden. Dirden’s work includes the television series “The Big ‘C’”, “The Good Wife,” and “The Americans.” On stage he’s appeared in “The Piano Lesson” and “All the Way” among other works. On SELECTED SHORTS, he recently read Phil Klay’s “OIF.”