James Baldwin (1924 - 1987) was a writer and civil rights activist. He wrote more than a dozen novels and essay collections, including Go Tell It on the Mountain, Giovanni’s Room, Notes of a Native Son, The Fire Next Time, No Name in the Street, and If Beale Street Could Talk. Baldwin’s work deals primarily with the social and cultural issues of being black and homosexual in America before and during the civil rights movement. His unfinished work, Remember This House, was adapted into the award-winning documentary I Am Not Your Negro in 2016, and a film adaptation of If Beale Street Could Talk was released in 2018.
Italo Calvino (1923 - 1985) was the author of numerous works of fiction and non-fiction, including The Baron in the Trees, The Castle of Crossed Destinies, Cosmicomics, Difficult Loves, If on a Winter’s Night a Traveler, Invisible Cities, Marcovaldo, Mr. Palomar, The Nonexistent Knight and The Cloven Viscount, t zero, Under the Jaguar Sun, The Watcher and Other Stories, Six Memos for the Next Millennium, The Uses of Literature, the anthology Italian Folktales, and several collections of literary essays. At the time of his death, Calvino was the most translated contemporary writer in Italy.
Edwidge Danticat is the author of numerous books, including Claire of the Sea Light, which was shortlisted for the Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction; Brother, I’m Dying, a National Book Critics Circle Award winner and National Book Award finalist; Breath, Eyes, Memory, an Oprah Book Club selection; Krik? Krak!, a National Book Award finalist; The Farming ofBones, an American Book Award winner; and The Dew Breaker, a PEN/Faulkner Award finalist and winner of the inaugural Story Prize. She is a 2009 MacArthur fellow, a 2018 Ford Foundation “The Art of Change” fellow, winner of the Langston Hughes Medal, the 2018 Neustadt International Prize, and the 2019 St. Louis Literary Award. Danticat holds honorary degrees from Smith College and Yale University. Her work has been published in The New Yorker, The New York Times, and The Washington Post, among others. Her young adult novel, Untwine, and her picture book, Mama's Nightingale, were published in 2015. Her latest collection of short stories, Everything Inside, was named a Best Book of 2019 by NPR, Buzzfeed, Time, and Esquire.
Brandon J. Dirden starred on Broadway as Martin Luther King, Jr. in the Tony Award-winning production of All the Way with Bryan Cranston, and as Booster in the Tony Award-winning revival of August Wilson’s Jitney. Additional Broadway credits include Clybourne Park, Enron, and Prelude to a Kiss. His many off-Broadway appearances include The Piano Lesson, for which he won Obie, Theatre World, and AUDELCO awards. On screen he has appeared in The Good Wife, The Big C, Public Morals, Manifest, The Get Down, The Accidental Wolf,Blue Bloods,The Quad, and four seasons of The Americans. He recently starred in the ABC series For Life and was seen in the miniseries Mrs. America. Dirden is a proud member of Actors Equity Association, SAG-AFTRA, and Fair Wage on Stage. Currently, he is working on Lessons in Survival, an online theatrical event where theater artists come together to reinvestigate the words of trailblazing artists and activists who survived and created in times of revolution in our country.
Roxane Gay is the author of numerous essay collections and works of fiction, including Ayiti, An Untamed State, Bad Feminist, Difficult Women, and Hunger, as well as the comic series World of Wakanda. Her writing has appeared in numerous publications, including The Best American Short Stories, McSweeney’s, Tin House, The New York Times, Rumpus, Oxford American, Salon, Virginia Quarterly Review, and Time. She is the founder of Tiny Hardcore Press and founding editor of PANK, and editor of collections including Not That Bad: Dispatches from Rape Culture and the 2018 edition of TheBest American Short Stories. She is currently an Associate Professor of Creative Writing at Purdue University. Recent works include Graceful Burdens, The Banks with artist Ming Doyle, the graphic novel The Sacrifice of Darkness, and as editor of The Selected Works of Audre Lorde.
James Naughton has won Tony Awards as Best Actor in a Musical for City of Angels and Chicago. On Broadway, he directed the Tony-nominated productions of Arthur Miller’s The Price and Thornton Wilder’s Our Town, starring Paul Newman. He also directed the television production of Our Town for Showtime and Masterpiece Theatre. He has appeared in numerous films and television shows, including The Devil Wears Prada, Damages, Gossip Girl, Ally McBeal, Planet of the Apes, Hostages, The Blacklist, The Affair, Equity, Odd Mom Out, The Tap, The Independents, The Romanoffs, and The Accidental Wolf.
Laurine Towler made her Broadway debut in Lettice and Lovage with Dame Maggie Smith, and appeared in the national tour with Julie Harris. She also toured nationally with The Tap Dance Kid. Her film and television credits include Woody Allen’s Celebrity and Small Time Crooks, People I Know with Al Pacino, Uptown Girls, Law & Order: SVU, Molly Gunn, The Sopranos, St. Elsewhere, and Brother to Brother. Towler is a social justice activist and has been a teaching artist with Morningside Center, Lincoln Center, The Roundabout Theatre Company, and Symphony Space.
