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. Additional select 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 a memoir, three books of poetry, and more than a dozen works of fiction, including the short story collection The Red Convertible and the award-winning novels Love Medicine, The Plague of Doves, The Round House, which won the National Book Award in 2012, LaRose, Future Home of the Living God, The Night Watchman, which was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 2021, and the The Sentence, which was published in 2021. Her latest work, Python’s Kiss, a collection of short stories, will be published this March.
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, Present Laughter, and Smash, in addition to her numerous off-Broadway and regional credits, most recently, Archduke at the Laura Pels Theater. 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, Devil in Disguise: John Wayne Gacy, 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, The Position, and The Wife, among other novels. A musical of The Interestings is in development. 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
“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.
