Child's Play

ACTORS & ARTISTS

Aimee Bender is the author of The Girl in the Flammable Skirt, An Invisible Sign of My Own, Willful Creatures, The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake, winner of the SCIBA award for best fiction and an Alex Award, and The Color Master. Her short fiction has appeared in Granta, GQ, Harper’s, Tin House, McSweeney’s, and The Paris Review, among other publications. Bender’s work has been honored with two Pushcart Prizes. Her third novel, The Butterfly Lampshade, was published this year.

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, and recent recurring roles in the series For the People and Strange Angel. 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 will appear in the forthcoming film The Rock Pile and the forthcoming miniseries Your Honor.

Jin Ha’s stage credits include the Chicago company of Hamilton: An American Musical (Aaron Burr), Julie Taymor’s Broadway revival of M. Butterfly (Song Liling), and most recently, Encores! Off-Center’s Road Show (Hollis Bessemer). Ha was also featured in NBC’s Grammy-nominated and Emmy Award-winning Jesus Christ Superstar: Live in Concert (Annas). Recent screen credits include Devs and Love Life. Ha is an alumnus of the NYU Tisch School of the Arts Graduate Acting program.

Etgar Keret is the author of numerous short story collections, including The Bus Driver Who Wanted to Be God; The Nimrod Flipout; Missing Kissinger; The Girl on the Fridge; and Suddenly, a Knock on the Door, as well as the memoir The Seven Good Years. His work has appeared in The New Yorker, The Wall Street Journal, The Paris Review, and The New York Times, among other publications. In 2010, he was honored with the Chevalier de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres, and he was awarded the Charles Bronfman Prize in 2016. His most recent work, the short story collection Fly Already, was published in 2019. Keret wrote and directed The Middleman, a mini-series for French TV starring Mathieu Amalric.

Jason Mantzoukas is best known for his numerous television credits, including Parks and Recreation, The League, Transparent, I’m Sorry, Brooklyn Nine-Nine, The Good Place, Big Mouth, Legion, Dickinson, No Activity, Solar Opposites, and the forthcoming series Invincible. Film credits include The Dictator, Sleeping with Other People, The Disaster Artist, John Wick: Chapter Three - Parabellum, and the forthcoming Infinite. Mantzoukas co-hosts the film discussion podcast How Did This Get Made?

Fiona McFarlane is the author of the novel The Night Guest, winner of the Voss Literary Prize and the Glenda Adams Award for New Writing, and the short story collection The High Places, winner of the Dylan Thomas Prize and the Nita Kibble Literary Award. Her short stories have been published in The New Yorker, The Best Australian Short Stories, Southerly, and Zoetrope: All-Story, among other publications.

Simon Rich is an American humorist, novelist, and television writer, known for being the youngest writer ever hired on Saturday Night Live and writing the Thurber Prize-nominated humor collection Ant Farm: And Other Desperate Situations. His most recent work, Hits and Misses, was published in 2018. He is the creator and showrunner of the FXX series Man Seeking Woman, which is based on his collection of short stories The Last Girlfriend on Earth, and the TBS series Miracle Workers, based on his novel What in God’s Name. Rich is a frequent contributor to the “Shouts & Murmurs” section of The New Yorker.

Andy Richter is best known for his collaborations with Conan O’Brien on Late Night, The Tonight Show, and Conan. He was awarded two Writers Guild of America awards for his contributions to Late Night with Conan O’Brien. He has been featured in dozens of film and television roles, most recently, Type A, Santa Clarita Diet, Final Space, Black-ish, Fresh Off the Boat, Big Hero 6: The Series, American Dad!, and Anidom Beyond. He currently hosts the Three Questions podcast.