ACTORS & ARTISTS
Karen Chee is a comedian and writer for Late Night with Seth Meyers. She has also written for the Golden Globes and has contributed to The New Yorker, The New York Times, The Washington Post, Reductress, and McSweeney’s, among other publications. She has appeared in La Bruja, The Special Without Brett Davis, and High Maintenance. She likes most people, including you, unless you're mean.
Jennifer Egan is the author of several works of fiction: A Visit from the Goon Squad, which won the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Critics Circle Award; The Keep; the short story collection Emerald City; Look at Me, a National Book Award finalist; and The Invisible Circus. Her work has appeared in The New Yorker, Harper’s Magazine, Granta, McSweeney’s, and The New York Times Magazine. Her most recent novel, Manhattan Beach, was awarded the Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction and is a New York Times bestseller. Egan served as President of PEN America from 2018 -2020.
Melora Hardin currently stars as Jacqueline Carlyle on the hit Freeform series The Bold Type. She also directed an episode in season four and was nominated for Best Directing for the 22nd Annual Women Image Awards. Hardin was featured on Amazon’s Transparent in her Emmy nominated role as Tammy Cashman, on ABC’s A Million Little Things, and is recognized worldwide as Jan Levinson from NBC’s The Office. She recently starred in the first one-woman movie ever, Golden Vanity, and can be seen in the feature films Caged and Cruel Hearts. Her extensive big-screen credits include 17 Again, Hannah Montana: The Movie, 27 Dresses, The Hot Chick, Absolute Power, and You, which she also directed. Hardin has been a professional actor since she was six years old and has guest starred on TV favorites such as Little House on the Prairie, The Love Boat, Friends, Gilmore Girls, Monk, The Blacklist, Falling Skies, and Scandal. She will direct two episodes in the fifth and final season of The Bold Type and is currently wrapping up a four-part documentary series.
Jac Jemc is the author of the novels My Only Wife, winner of the Paula Anderson Book Award, The Grip of It, and the short story collections A Different Bed Every Time and False Bingo, winner of the Chicago Review of Books Award for Fiction and finalist for the Story Prize. Her forthcoming novel, Total Work of Art, will be published in 2022. Jemc currently teaches creative writing at UC San Diego.
Jordan Klepper is perhaps best known for his work as a correspondent on The Daily Show, his comedy series The Opposition with Jordan Klepper, and his docuseries Klepper. He is an alumnus of the improv troupes The Second City and Upright Citizens Brigade. He and his wife, Laura Grey, are co-creators of short films including TMI, a featured short at the Slamdance Film Festival, and Peepers, which premiered at South By Southwest.
Renée Jessica Tan has been published in two short story compilations, We've All Been There and Believe Me Not, An Unreliable Anthology. For two years, she wrote a blog about her life as a recreational runner called Exposed Tan Lines. Unfortunately, it was often mistaken for something other than a running blog. Renée graduated from New York University and now lives in Los Angeles. She is currently working on a collection of short fiction.
Kirsten Vangsness is best known as Penelope Garcia on the CBS drama Criminal Minds; however, she can be found in other places, including a few podcasts (Selected Shorts and Voyage to the Stars), the film noir spoof Kill Me Deadly, and Curtains, the animated short she created, which was released in 2020. She was nominated for Playwright of the Year by LA Weekly and is a company member of Hollywood's Theater of NOTE. Vangsness recently returned from the Edinburgh Festival Fringe, where two of her plays, Mess and Cleo, Theo and Wu, were performed at Assembly Rooms. In her spare time, Vangsness buses tables at the Blinking Owl Distillery, which she co-owns, in Santa Ana.
