Molly Bernard is most recognizable for her role as Lauren Heller on Younger. Additionally, she starred in and executive produced the indie film Milkwater, which premiered at the Brooklyn Film Festival. Bernard co-starred as medical student Elsa Curry on NBC’s Chicago Med. Her additional television and film credits include Transparent, Alpha House, High Maintenance, Blindspot, Otherhood, Sully, Pay it Forward, The Intern, and The Blacklist. Upcoming projects include the films Lone Star Bull, Best Man Dead Man, and Hitman.
Hilary Leichter is the author of the novel Temporary, which was shortlisted for The Center for Fiction First Novel Prize and longlisted for the PEN/Hemingway Award. Her writing has appeared in n+1, The New Yorker, Harper's, The New York Times, and Conjunctions. She teaches fiction at Columbia University and has been awarded fellowships from Yaddo, the Folger Shakespeare Library, and the New York Foundation for the Arts. Her forthcoming novel, Terrace Story, will be published in August 2023.
Carmen Maria Machado is the author of the short story collection Her Body and Other Parties, a National Book Award finalist for fiction; the memoir In the Dream House, winner of The Rathbones Folio Prize and a Lambda Literary Award; and the comic series The Low, Low Woods. Her fiction and essays have appeared in TheNew Yorker, Granta, Tin House, The Paris Review, The Believer, McSweeney’s, The New York Times, Vogue, and elsewhere. Machado contributed to Symphony Space’s anthology of short stories, Small Odysseys.
Louise Erdrich is the author of more than a dozen novels, including Love Medicine, The Plague of Doves, The Round House, The Bingo Palace, Tales of Burning Love, The Antelope Wife, LaRose, and The Night Watchman, which won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. She has also written volumes of poetry, children’s books, short stories, and a memoir of early motherhood. Her most recent novel, The Sentence, was published in 2021.
Sarah Mezzanotte starred in the original cast of Sarah DeLappe's award-winning play The Wolves, and appeared in the 2017 Broadway revival of Six Degrees of Separation. She also starred in the world premiere of Dry Land, which garnered a New York Times Critics' Pick. Her film and television credits include Chambers on Netflix, Drunk Bus, The Blacklist, Blue Bloods, Law & Order: Special Victims Unit, Royal Pains, Blame, A Solider’s Heart, and the Amazon pilot The Interestings. Mezzanotte is a graduate of The Tisch School at NYU.
Cynthia Nixon made her film debut in Little Darlings at 12 and her Broadway debut at 14 in The Philadelphia Story. Since then she’s appeared in more than 40 plays, scores of films and TV shows, and won 2 Emmys, 2 Tonys, and a Grammy. Best known for her role as Miranda on HBO’s Sex and the City, she currently co-stars in the sequel series And Just Like That and in Julian Fellowes’ The Gilded Age (also on HBO). Nixon appeared on numerous "Best Actress of 2018" lists for her portrayal of Emily Dickinson in Terrence Davies' much-lauded film A Quiet Passion. In 2018 she also ran for Governor of New York State, putting issues of economic, racial, and gender equality front and center. She and her wife Christine Marinoni live in Manhattan and have 3 children—Sam, Charlie and Max.
Alison Stewart is the host of All Of It with Alison Stewart, WNYC’s program about culture, and the book club Get Lit with All Of It. She began her career as a producer/reporter for MTV News’ presidential campaign coverage “Choose or Lose,” which earned her a Peabody Award. She has anchored her own news programs on NPR, PBS, ABC, and MSNBC. Stewart is a contributor with The Atlantic LIVE and PBS NewsHour, and the author of two books: First Class: The Legacy of Dunbar, America's First Black Public High School and Junk: Digging Through America’s Love Affair With Stuff.
Meg Wolitzer is the New York Times bestselling author of The Female Persuasion, The Interestings, The Ten-Year Nap, and The Wife, which was adapted to film in 2018, starring Glenn Close and Jonathan Pryce. She was the guest editor of The Best American Short Stories 2017, and has also published books for young readers, mostly recently a picture book, Millions of Maxes. Wolitzer is a faculty member in the MFA program at Stony Brook Southampton, where she co-founded and co-directs BookEnds, a one-year, non-credit intensive in the novel.
CREDITS
“Doggy-Dog World” by Hilary Leichter. First published in Paper Darts Magazine. Copyright © 2016 by Hilary Liechter. Used by permission of the author.
“Horror Story” by Carmen Maria Machado. First published in Granta. Copyright © 2015 by Carmen Maria Machado. Used by permission of Neon Literary.
“Sister Godzilla” from the February 2001 issue of The Atlantic. Copyright © 2001 by Louise Erdrich, used by permission of The Wylie Agency, LLC.
