Approaching Peace

Rabih Alameddine is the author of the novels Koolaids; I, the Divine; The Hakawati; An Unnecessary Woman; The Angel of History; and the story collection The Perv. His novel The Wrong End of the Telescope was released in September 2021, and won the 2022 PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction.

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 Director of the Shapiro Center at Wesleyan University. Her memoir In Love was published in 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, and Minx. 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. She can currently be seen on Succession, for which she was nominated for an Emmy Award, and Your Honor. Upcoming projects include Asteroid City.

Dave Eggers is the author of many books, including The Every, The Circle, The Monk of Mokha, and the National Book Award finalist A Hologram for the King, as well as numerous books for young readers, including Her Right Foot, Faraway Things, and The Lifters. He is the founder of the independent publishing company McSweeney's and the college-access nonprofit ScholarMatch, and the co-founder of 826 Valencia, a youth writing center that has inspired dozens of other centers worldwide. He is the winner of the Muhammad Ali Humanitarian Award for Education and the Dayton Literary Peace Prize.

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 guest starred on Mom, The Good Wife, and Madam Secretary. She appeared with Robert De Niro in Nancy Meyers’ The Intern. Additional recent feature films include Manhattan Night with Adrien Brody, How to Be A Latin Lover opposite Rob Lowe and Eugenio Derbez, Nancy Drew and the Hidden Staircase, Naked Singularity, and Being the Ricardos. 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 Yvette Slosch, Agent and B Positive. 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. Lavin recently starred in You Will Get Sick with Roundabout Theatre.

Pooya Mohseni is a New York–based actor, writer, and transgender activist, born and raised in Tehran, Iran. She has appeared in Hamlet and Comedy of Errors at the Play On Shakespeare Festival, One Woman with United Solo, Galatea with the WP Project, The Good Muslim at EST, White Snake at Baltimore Center Stage, Death of the Persian Prince with the Midtown International Theatre Festival and the SAIPAF, 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, Lucky, Terrifier, See You Then, Remote, Entanglement, and Nightmare Radio: The Night Stalker. Mohseni recently appeared in the world premiere of English with Atlantic Theater Company.

David Rakoff (1964 – 2012 ) is the author of four New York Times bestsellers: the essay collections Fraud, Don’t Get Too Comfortable, and Half Empty, and the novel in verse Love, Dishonor, Marry, Die, Cherish, Perish. A two-time recipient of the Lambda Literary Award and winner of the Thurber Prize for American Humor, he was a regular contributor to Public Radio International’s This American Life. His writing frequently appeared in The New York Times, Newsweek, Wired, Salon, GQ, Outside, Gourmet, Vogue, and Slate, among other publications. An accomplished stage and screen actor, playwright, and screenwriter, Rakoff adapted the screenplay for and starred in Joachim Back’s film The New Tenants, which won the 2010 Academy Award for Best Live Action Short.

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

“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.