Thomas Beller is the author of the fiction collections Seduction Theory, The Sleep-Over Artist, Lost and Found: Stories from New York, and How to Be a Man: Scenes from a Protracted Boyhood, as well as the biography J.D. Salinger: The Escape Artist, winner of the New York City Book Award for Biography/Memoir. He co-founded the Open City magazine and co-edited the publication for twenty years. Beller’s work has appeared in The New York Times, Vogue, Harper’s Bazaar, Ploughshares, The Southwest Review, Guernica, Salon, among other publications, and he regularly contributes to The New Yorker. He teaches at Tulane University.
Augusten Burroughs is the New York Times bestselling author of the memoirs Running with Scissors, Dry, A Wolf at the Table, and Lust & Wonder, the essay collections Magical Thinking and Possible Side Effects, the novel Sellevision, and the short story collection You Better Not Cry. Running with Scissors was adapted into a film in 2006. His most recent memoir, Toil & Trouble, was published in 2019.
Michael Cerveris is the two-time Tony Award and Grammy Award-winning Broadway star of Fun Home and Assassins. Additional Broadway credits include Sweeney Todd, The Who's Tommy, Evita, Titanic, LoveMusik, Cymbeline, Hedda Gabler, Sarah Ruhl's In the Next Room (or the vibrator play), and many others. Off-Broadway, he has appeared in King Lear, Road Show, Nine Lives, and Nassim and many more. His film and television credits include Fringe, Treme, Madam Secretary, The Good Wife, The Mexican, Cirque Du Freak, The Tick, Gotham, Mosaic, Ant-Man and the Wasp, Elementary, Evil, and The Plot Against America. Cerveris also works as a musician, both solo and with his band, Loose Cattle. He can be seen in the forthcoming Julian Fellowes series The Gilded Age for HBOMax.
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?; and Ode to Joy. 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, and most recently, United We Fall and Godmothered. Her most recent film, Queen Bees, was released in 2021.
Meg Wolitzer’s novels include The Female Persuasion, The Interestings, The Uncoupling, The Ten-Year Nap, The Position, and The Wife, which was adapted to film starring Glenn Close in 2018. She has also published novels for young readers. Wolitzer served as guest editor of The Best American Short Stories 2017.
CREDITS
“And Two Eyes Made Out of Coal” by Augusten Burroughs. Copyright © 2009 by Island Road LLC, originally published in You Better Not Cry by St. Martin’s Press. Used by permission of Augusten Burroughs c/o Selectric Artists LLC.
“Live Wires” by Thomas Beller, from The New Yorker (December 1993). Copyright © 1993 by Thomas Beller. Used by permission of the author.
