Seth Fried is a fiction and humor writer. He is the author of the novel The Municipalists and the short story collection The Great Frustration. He is a regular contributor to The New Yorker’s “Shouts and Murmurs,” and his stories have appeared in Tin House, One Story, McSweeney’s Quarterly Concern, The Kenyon Review, Vice, and many others. Fried is the winner of three Pushcart Prizes and the William Peden Prize.
Mira Jacob is a novelist, memoirist, illustrator, and cultural critic. Her graphic memoir, Good Talk: A Memoir in Conversations, was shortlisted for the National Book Critics Circle Award and longlisted for the PEN Open Book Award, and her novel, The Sleepwalker’s Guide to Dancing, was named one of the best books of the year by Kirkus Reviews, Boston Globe, Goodreads, Bustle, and The Millions.
Maile Meloy is the author of the novels Liars and Saints, A Family Daughter, and Do Not Become Alarmed, the short-story collections Half in Love and Both Ways Is the Only Way I Want It, and a middle-grade trilogy that begins with The Apothecary. She has received the PEN/Malamud Award, the E. B. White Award, and a Guggenheim Fellowship.
Kelli O’Hara won a Tony Award for her performance as Anna in The King and I. She has appeared on Broadway in The Light in the Piazza; The Pajama Game; South Pacific; She Loves Me; Nice Work If You Can Get It; The Bridges of Madison County; and Kiss Me, Kate. She has performed at the Metropolitan Opera, Carnegie Hall, on Capitol Hill, on PBS’s live telecasts, and the Kennedy Center Honors. Her film and television credits include Sex and the City 2, Peter Pan Live!, Masters of Sex, The Good Fight, The Independents, 13 Reasons Why, All the Bright Places, and she can currently be seen in The Accidental Wolf, for which she received an Emmy nomination, and The Gilded Age. O’Hara will star in the forthcoming operatic adaptation of Michael Cunningham’s The Hours at the Metropolitan Opera.
Natasha Rothwell was a series regular and co-producer on HBO’s Insecure, for which she was nominated for a NAACP Image Award. She wrote and starred in Netflix Presents: The Characters and previously wrote for Saturday Night Live. Additional credits include Love, Simon; Brooklyn Nine-Nine; DuckTales; Bojack Horseman; Bob’s Burgers; Sonic the Hedgehog; Wonder Woman 1984; Love, Victor; the animated series Baby Shark’s Big Show!; and The White Lotus, for which she received an Emmy Award nomination. Rothwell can be seen next in the upcoming film Wonka.
Rita Wolf most recently appeared in Out of Time with the National Asian American Theatre Company at The Public Theater. She was also featured in What Happened? The Michaels Abroad, written and directed by Richard Nelson at the Frederick Loewe Theater at Hunter College, and The Michaels at The Public. Additional theater credits include An Ordinary Muslim at The New York Theatre Workshop, The American Pilot at the Manhattan Theatre Club, for which she was nominated for a Drama Desk Award, and the premiere of Tony Kushner's Homebody/Kabul at New York Theatre Workshop and later at BAM.
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. She is excited to be the new host of the literary radio show and podcast Selected Shorts.
CREDITS
“Sea Monster” by Seth Fried. First published in The 2018 Short Story Advent Calendar (Hinston and Olsen, 2018). Used by permission of the author.
“Death by Printer” and “Period Piece” were commissioned by Symphony Space for the collection Small Odysseys: Selected Shorts Presents 35 New Stories, edited by Hannah Tinti, published by Algonquin Books. © 2022 by Symphony Space.