Elements of Nature

Jenny Allen is a writer and performer whose works include the fable collection The Long Chalkboard and, most recently, Would Everybody Please Stop?, a finalist for the Thurber Prize for American Humor. She wrote and starred in the award-winning one-woman show I Got Sick Then I Got Better. Allen’s writing has been featured in several anthologies, including Disquiet, Please!: More Humor Writing from The New Yorker and The 50 Funniest American Writers, edited by Andy Borowitz.

Kate Chopin (1850 – 1904) Born and raised in St. Louis. She is best known today for the novella The Awakening, a portrait of marriage and motherhood, and At Fault. From 1892 to 1895, Chopin wrote short stories for both children and adults that were published in national magazines, including The Atlantic Monthly, Vogue, The Century Magazine, and The Youth's Companion. Some of her most popular short stories include Désirèe’s Baby, The Story of an Hour, and The Storm.

Jane Curtin has appeared on Broadway in Noises Off, Candida, and Our Town. Her off-Broadway work includes Love Letters and the musical revue Pretzels, which she co-wrote. She starred in the television series 3rd Rock from the Sun and won back-to-back Emmy Awards for her role on Kate & Allie. She is an original cast member of Saturday Night Live and also starred in the television film series The Librarian and its spin-off, The Librarians. Her film credits include Coneheads; Antz; I Love You, Man; I Don’t Know How She Does It; The Heat; The Spy Who Dumped Me; Can You Ever Forgive Me?; Ode to Joy; Godmothered; Queen Bees; and Jules, opposite Sir Ben Kingsley. She starred on the television series Unforgettable and has had guest appearances on The Good Wife, 48 Hours ’til Monday, The Good Fight, Broad City, United We Fall, and Bupkis. Curtin can currently be seen on the Netflix mini-series The Residence.

Kimberly Guerrero is a contemporary Native American storyteller who works in film, television, and theater. Her recent acting credits include streaming hits Reservation Dogs on Hulu, Rutherford Falls on Peacock, Amazon’s The English, Spirit Rangers on Netflix, Station 19 on Hulu, Amazon’s Outer Range, HBO’s IT : Welcome To Derry, and the feature films Cottonmouth, Keep Quiet, Montana Story, Catch the Fair One, and the Gloria Steinem biopic The Glorias, in which she plays Cherokee Chief Wilma Mankiller opposite Julianne Moore. On stage, she originated the role of Johnna in Tracy Letts’s Tony Award and Pulitzer Prize–winning play August: Osage County, and also starred in Manahatta at The Public Theater in New York and The Frybread Queen with Native Voices in Los Angeles. She also serves as the Artistic Director at UC Riverside, where she is an Associate Professor in the Theater, Film, and Digital Filmmaking Department. Guerrero is an enrolled member of the Colville Tribes and also has Salish-Kootenai heritage.

Thomas King is an award-winning writer whose fiction includes Sufferance; Indians on Vacation, which won the Leacock Medal for Humour;Green Grass, Running Water; Truth and Bright Water; and The Back of the Turtle, which won the Governor General’s Literary Award. The Truth About Stories won the Trillium Book Award, and The Inconvenient Indian won the RBC Taylor Prize, as well as the BC National Book Award for Canadian Non-Fiction. King’s first collection of poetry, 77 Fragments of a Familiar Ruin, was shortlisted for the Nelson Ball Prize. A Companion of the Order of Canada and the recipient of a National Aboriginal Achievement Award, Thomas King taught at the University of Lethbridge and was chair of American Indian Studies at the University of Minnesota. Following this, he taught at the University of Guelph until he retired. His latest novel, Aliens on the Moon, was published in August 2025.

Alyce Miller is the award-winning author of the short story collections The Nature of Longing, which won the Flannery O'Connor Award for Short Fiction, Water, winner of Mary McCarthy Prize, and Sweet Love, winner of Ellen Gilchrist Award, the novel Stopping for Green Lights, and Skunk, a natural and cultural history of skunks. She has published more than 250 stories, novellas, essays, poems, and articles.

Kirsten Vangsness is best known for playing the bespectacled tech kitten Penelope Garcia on Criminal Minds, which will soon air its 19th season on Paramount+, and Bigelow McFigglehorn on Wizards Beyond Waverly Place on Disney. Kirsten has been touring with her third solo piece, Outdated, which she recently performed at San Francisco Sketchfest, and she is the host of BITS, a monthly performance salon in Hollywood. She LOVES reading for Selected Shorts.

Meg Wolitzer is the New York Times bestselling author of The Female Persuasion, The Interestings, The Ten-Year Nap, The Position, and The Wife, among other novels. A musical of The Interestings is in development. Wolitzer was the guest editor of The Best American Short Stories 2017, and also writes books for young readers. She is a faculty member in the Creative Writing Program at Stony Brook University, where she co-founded and co-directs BookEnds, a yearlong intensive for emerging novelists.

CREDITS

“Garden Growing Pains,” by Jenny Allen, from The New Yorker (October 14, 2017). Copyright © 2017 by Jenny Allen. Used by permission of the author.

From “Borders,” in One Good Story, That One. (HarperCollins, 1993; New Edition, 1999). Copyright © 1993 Dead Dog Café Productions Inc. With permission of the author.

“Flying,” by Alyce Miller, from Sweet Love (IsoLibris/China Grove Press, 2015). Copyright © 2015 by Alyce Miller. Used by permission of the author.