Crybabies

In “I Am the Bear,” by Wendy Brenner, a misfit and a model have an odd encounter. Brenner is the author of the short story collections Large Animals in Everyday Life, winner of the Flannery O’Connor Award for Short Fiction, and Phone Calls from the Dead. Her fiction and essays have been featured in Ploughshares, Mississippi Review, The Sun, Seventeen, and Allure, among other publications, and have been anthologized in The Best American Essays and New Stories from the South. Brenner is a contributing editor for the Oxford American and a recipient of the National Endowment for the Arts fellowship. She currently teaches at the University of North Carolina-Wilmington.

The reader is Kate Walsh, best known for her role as Dr. Addison Montgomery on Grey's Anatomy and its spin-off series Private Practice, as well as her starring role on Bad Judge. Additional television credits include The Drew Carey Show, Funny or Die Presents, Full Circle, Everyone’s Crazy But Us, and 13 Reasons Why. Walsh has appeared off-Broadway in Dusk Rings a Bell and the Roundabout Theatre Company’s production of If I Forget, which was streamed on Broadway HD. Her film credits include Kicking & Screaming, Under the Tuscan Sun, The Perks of Being a Wallflower, Just Before I Go, Fargo, Girls Trip, Corporate, and most recently, Mark Felt: The Man Who Brought Down the White House.

In our second work, “All the Time We Have,” the late David Rakoff writes of the death of his former analyst, and in the course of this affecting work—funny/sad like so much of his writing— is clearly contemplating his own mortality. Rakoff, who died in 2012, wrote the bestsellers Fraud, Don’t Get Too Comfortable, Half Empty, and the novel-in-verse Love, Dishonor, Marry, Die, Cherish, Perish. A two-time recipient of the Lambda Literary Award and a winner of the Thurber Prize for American Humor, he was a regular contributor to Public Radio International’s This American Life as well as a frequent reader at Selected Shorts. His work 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, he adapted the screenplay for and starred in Joachim Back’s film The New Tenants, which won the 2010 Oscar for Best Live Action Short Film.

“All the Time We Have,” is performed by Dennis O’Hare, whose film credits include Garden State, 21 Grams, A Mighty Heart, Michael Clayton, Milk, Duplicity, HBO’s The Normal Heart, Dallas Buyers Club, Private Life, andLizzie. He won a Tony Award for his performance in Richard Greenberg’s Take Me Out and a Drama Desk Award for his role in Sweet Charity. His television credits include American Horror Story, True Blood, The Good Wife, The Comedians, and This Is Us.

Our final piece, Maggie Smith’s poem “Good Bones,” was first read on the “Crybabies” podcast by the actor you’ll hear on this show, Busy Philipps. With the result, say the hosts, that everyone wound up with “mascara running down their faces.” Maggie Smith (no relation to the actor) is the author of the poetry collections Good Bones, The Well Speaks of Its Own Poison, and Lamp of the Body. Her poems have been featured in Best American Poetry, The New York Times, Tin House, The Paris Review, Ploughshares, Guernica, and elsewhere. Smith has received fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Ohio Arts Council, and the Sustainable Arts Foundation, among others.

Reader Busy Philipps won the Critics’ Choice Television Award for Best Supporting Actress in a Comedy Series for her work on Cougar Town. Her film and television credits include Freaks and Geeks, The Smokers, Dawson’s Creek,White Chicks, ER, Made of Honor, He’s Just Not That Into You, The Gift, Drunk History, and Vice Principals. She was a regular contributor to the live stage radio show Thrilling Adventure Hour and is the co-host of the podcastWe’re No Doctors.