Colton Dunn is an actor, writer, producer, and director best known for his role as Garrett on Superstore. His additional acting credits include The Recruit, the voice of Russell on Big City Greens, Key and Peele, Curb Your Enthusiasm, History of the World: Part II, Middlemost, Fairfax, and Parks and Recreation.
Betsuyaku Minoru (1937 – 2020) was an award-winning novelist, essayist, and playwright. He is well known for his work in the Nansensu (nonsense) genre. He wrote more than 130 plays, plus books for children, essays, and novels.
Suzy Nakamura is proud to be the first Asian American woman at The Second City in Chicago. Her many television credits include The West Wing, Curb Your Enthusiasm, Modern Family, Snowfall, Dead to Me, and Avenue 5. Recent favorite credits include POTUS on Broadway, Knox Goes Away with Michael Keaton, and Exploding Kittens.
Lauren Pruneski is a graduate of the MFA program at the University of Michigan, where she won a thesis prize and a Hopwood Award. She lives with her family in New Jersey.
Simon Rich is a frequent contributor to The New Yorker. He has written for Saturday Night Live, Pixar, and The Simpsons and is the creator of the TV shows Man Seeking Woman and Miracle Workers, which he based on his books. His other collections include Ant Farm, Spoiled Brats, New Teeth, Glory Days, and Hits and Misses, which won the Thurber Prize for American Humor. Rich’s play All In: Comedy About Love premiered at the Hudson Theatre on Broadway in 2024.
Royall Tyler is a translator specializing in Japanese literature. He earned degrees in Japanese studies at Harvard and Columbia; taught in the U.S., Canada, and Norway; and retired in 2000 from the Australian National University. His translations include Japanese Tales; Japanese Nō Dramas; Before Heike and After: Hōgen, Heiji, Jōkyūki; and The Tale of Genji, for which he received the 2007 Japan Foundation Award, and The Tale of the Heike, which won the 2012 Lois Roth Award.
Kirsten Vangsness is best known for playing the bespectacled tech kitten Penelope Garcia on Criminal Minds, which is on its 18th season for Paramount+ and as Bigelow McFigglehorn on the new Wizards Beyond Waverly Place on Disney. Kirsten has just penned her third solo piece, Outdated, which will be opening early 2025, and she is the host of BITS, a monthly performance salon in Hollywood.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. The Interestings is currently being adapted as a musical, with a book by Sarah Ruhl and music and lyrics by Sara Bareilles. 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
“Participation Trophy,” by Simon Rich, from Glory Days: Stories (Little, Brown and Company, 2024). First published in The New Yorker (May 22, 2023). Copyright © 2023 by Simon Rich. Used by permission of Levine, Greenberg, Rostan Literary Agency.
“Factory Town,” by Betsuyaku Minoru, translated by Royall Tyler, from The Penguin Book of Japanese Short Stories (Penguin Classics, 2018). Copyright © 1973 by Betsuyaku Minoru. English translation copyright © 2018 by Royall Tyler.
“Mama, Mama,” by Lauren Pruneski, from The Southern Review (Volume 57, Number 2, Spring 2021). Copyright © 2021 by Lauren Pruneski. Abridged version of the text used by permission of the author.
