Keir Dullea's career spans over 60 years and has included starring roles in Stanley Kubrick's 2001:A Space Odyssey, Bunny Lake Is Missing, Black Christmas, Madame X with Lana Turner, and David and Lisa, for which he won a Golden Globe Award. His Broadway credits include the first revival of Cat On a Hot Tin Roof opposite Elizabeth Ashley, Butterflies Are Free, and P. S. Your Cat Is Dead. He starred opposite Mia Dillon in the Bucks County Playhouse regional production of On Golden Pond. His recent film and television appearances include Fahrenheit 451, Sonder, Valley of the Gods, Hunters, Halo, and voicing the role of Keeper Aquilius in the video game Starfield.
Louise Erdrich is the author of more than a dozen novels as well as volumes of poetry, children’s books, short stories, and a memoir of early motherhood. Her novel The Night Watchmen won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. Her most recent novel, The Sentence, was published in 2021.
Kristine Nielsen’s Broadway credits include The Iceman Cometh, The Greenbird, A Streetcar Named Desire, Dangerous Liaisons, Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson, Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike, for which she won an Outer Critics Circle Award, You Can’t Take It With You, and Present Laughter, in addition to her numerous off-Broadway and regional credits, most recently, Infinite life at the Atlantic Theatre Company. On screen, Nielsen has appeared in Political Animals, The Sound of Music Live!, Happyish, Elementary, Z: The Beginning of Everything, Great Performances, The Bug Diaries, Little Voice, Blue Bloods, Son, Prodigal Son, FBI Most Wanted, The Good Fight, and The Gilded Age.
One of the 20th century's foremost humorists, James Thurber (1894 – 1961) joined The New Yorker in 1927. Much of his distinctive prose and illustrations were created for its pages and collected in some thirty books. These include Men, Women and Dogs; The Years with Ross; his autobiography, My Life and Hard Times; the play The Male Animal; The Thurber Carnival, a theatrical revue that won a Special Tony Award in 1960; and the renowned story “The Secret Life of Walter Mitty,” twice adapted to film. In honor of Thurber’s legacy, the Thurber Prize for American Humor has recognized outstanding comedic writing since 1997. This year ushers in two new Thurber collections: Collected Fables and A Mile and a Half of Lines: The Art of James Thurber, both edited by Michael J. Rosen.
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.
CREDITS
“The Big Cat,” by Louise Erdrich, from The Best American Short Stories 2015 (Mariner Books, 2015). First published in The New Yorker (March 31, 2014). Copyright © 2014 by Louise Erdrich. Used by permission of The Wylie Agency, LLC.
“The Breaking Up of the Winships,” first published in The New Yorker (January 11, 1936). Copyright © 1936 by James Thurber, copyright renewed 1973 by Rosemary A. Thurber. Used by permission of Rosemary A. Thurber and The Barbara Hogenson Agency, Inc.
