Approaching Peace

Rabih Alameddine is a Lebanese-American painter and writer. He is the author of the novels The Angel of History; An Unnecessary Woman; The Hakawati; I, the Divine; Koolaids; and the story collection The Perv. In 2019, he won the Dos Passos Prize.

Amy Bloom is the author of White Houses; Come to Me, a National Book Award finalist; A Blind Man Can See How Much I Love You, nominated for the National Book Critics Circle Award; Love Invents Us; Normal; Away, a New York Times bestseller; Where the God of Love Hangs Out; and Lucky Us, a New York Times bestseller. Her stories have appeared in The Best American Short Stories, O. Henry Prize Short Stories, The Scribner Anthology of Contemporary Short Fiction, and many other anthologies here and abroad. She has written for The New Yorker, The New York Times Magazine, The Atlantic Monthly, Vogue, O: The Oprah Magazine,Slate, Tin House, and Salon, among other publications, and has won a National Magazine Award. She is the Shapiro-Silverberg Professor of Creative Writing at Wesleyan University. Her memoir In Love will be published in March 2022.

Hope Davis has appeared in the films About Schmidt; American Splendor; Synecdoche, New York; Captain America: Civil War; and Rebel in the Rye, among others. On television, Davis’s credits include In Treatment, The Newsroom, The Special Relationship, Allegiance, American Crime, Wayward Pines, with recent recurring roles in the series For the People, Strange Angel, Love Life, Succession, and the miniseries Your Honor. Her theater credits include Ivanov, Two Shakespearean Actors, Spinning Into Butter, Food Chain, Measure for Measure, God of Carnage, for which she was nominated for a Tony Award, and The Red Barn.

Dave Eggers is the author of many books, among them the Every, The Circle, The Monk of Mokha, A Hologram for the King, What Is the What, The Museum of Rain, and A Heartbreaking Work Of Staggering Genius: A Memoir Based on a True Story. He is the co-founder of 826 National, a network of youth writing centers, and of Voice of Witness, an oral history book series that illuminates the stories of those impacted by human rights crises. He has been a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize, the National Book Award, and the National Book Critics Circle Award, and is the recipient of the Dayton Literary Peace Prize and the American Book Award. He has attended the Jetpack Aviation Academy in Moorpark, California, but is not yet certified to fly off-tether. Born in Boston and raised in Illinois, he has now lived in the San Francisco Bay Area for three decades. He and his family often consider leaving, but they do not leave.

Linda Lavin has won a Tony Award, as well as Drama Desk, Outer Critics' and Helen Hayes Awards for her performance in Broadway Bound in 1987. She is a six-time Tony Award nominee for her roles in The Last of the Red Hot Lovers, The Diary of Anne Frank, The Tale of the Allergist's Wife, Collected Stories, and The Lyons. In 2017, Lavin was seen in Candide directed by Hal Prince and received stellar reviews. Inducted into the Theatre Hall of Fame in 2011, additional theater credits include The New Century (Drama Desk Award), Other Desert Cities (LCT), and Too Much Sun (Vineyard Theatre). She is a two-time Golden Globe winner for her role as Alice on the nine-year hit TV series Alice on CBS, and she co-starred with Sean Hayes in the NBC series Sean Saves the World. Lavin has also recently guest starred on Mom, The Good Wife, and Madam Secretary. She also appeared with Robert De Niro in Nancy Meyers’ The Intern. Additional recent feature films include A Short History of Decay, Manhattan Nocturne with Adrien Brody, How to Be A Latin Lover opposite Rob Lowe and Eugenio Derbez, Nancy Drew and the Hidden Staircase, and Naked Singularity. Lavin starred as a series regular on the CBS sitcom 9JKL opposite Mark Feurstein and Elliot Gould, and was most recently seen on the series Brockmire, The Santa Clarita Diet, and Yvette Slosch, Agent. She was born in Portland, Maine, and is a graduate of the College of William & Mary, which recently conferred on her an honorary doctor of arts degree, where she endows a theater program. Lavin performs her concert act with Billy Stritch, her music director, and has released two CDs of jazz standards and show tunes, Possibilities and Love Notes.

Pooya Mohseni is a transgender actor, writer, and activist, born and raised in Tehran, Iran, based in New York City. She has appeared in Hamlet and Comedy of Errors at the Play On Shakespeare Festival, One Woman with United Solo, Galatea with the Women’s Pipeline Project, The Good Muslim at Ensemble Studio Theatre, White Snake at Baltimore Center Stage, The Maids with Access Theatre, Death of the Persian Prince with the Midtown International Theatre Festival and the South Asian International Performing Arts Festival, and A Touch of Forever with the New York International Fringe Festival. Her film and television credits include Law & Order: SVU, Big Dogs, Falling Water, Madam Secretary, Lofty Dreams, The World Trader, Lucky, Terrifier, Day 39, Heather, and See You Then. Mohseni is a transgender advocate as well as a voice for immigrants’ and women’s issues.

CREDITS

“Break,” by Rabih Alameddine, from The New Yorker (September 2018). Copyright © 2018 by Rabih Alameddine. Used by permission of Aragi, Inc.

“Your Mother and I,” by Dave Eggers, from How We Are Hungry. Copyright © 2004 by Dave Eggers. Used by permission of the author.

"Silver Water," by Amy Bloom. Copyright © 1991 by Amy Bloom. Originally published in Story and included in Best American Short Stories 1992, published by Houghton Mifflin. Used by permission of Rosenstone/Wender.