Known for his work in The Hangover and National Treasure franchises, Justin Bartha was most recently seen in Miracle on 74th Street, Nuked, The Accidental Wolf, Atlanta, The Godfather of Harlem, and The Good Fight. Additional credits include the films Sweet Girl, Driven, White Girl, Holy Rollers, Dark Horse, Failure to Launch, and The Rebound. Stage credits include the Tony-nominated revival of Lend Me a Tenor, Jesse Eisenberg's Asunción, Robert Askins’ Permission, and Neil Simon's Sunshine Boys for The Center Theatre Group. His upcoming projects include the series National Treasure: Edge of History coming to Disney+.
Cherline Bazile is a Haitian American fiction writer from Florida. She graduated cum laude from Harvard University, where she studied English. She was an Artist Fellow at Harvard’s Office of Fine Arts, a Mellon Mays Undergraduate Fellow, a Thouron Prize recipient, and a Hoopes Prize recipient. Cherline attended the Helen Zell Writers’ Program at the University of Michigan, where she received her MFA in Fiction. At HZWP, Cherline won three Hopwood awards and was a 2019 Paul & Daisy Soros Fellow. Her fiction has been featured on NPR and in The Sewanee Review and Best American Short Stories 2023.
Min Jin Lee is the author of the novels Free Food for Millionaires and Pachinko, a finalist for the National Book Award, runner-up for the Dayton Literary Peace Prize, and a New York Times "100 Best Books of the Century.” Lee's third novel, American Hagwon, is forthcoming in September 2026. Lee serves as the New York State Author Laureate from September 2025 through 2027. She is the 2024 recipient of The Fitzgerald Prize for Literary Excellence. Lee has received the Manhae Grand Prize for Literature, the Bucheon Diaspora Literary Award, and the Samsung Happiness for Tomorrow Award for Creativity from South Korea. She is the recipient of fellowships in Fiction from the Guggenheim Foundation, the Harvard Radcliffe Institute, and the New York Foundation for the Arts. Lee is an inductee of the New York Foundation for the Arts Hall of Fame and the New York State Writers Hall of Fame. She served as the Editor of Best American Short Stories 2023. Lee’s essays and criticism have appeared in numerous publications, including The New York Times, The New Yorker, The New York Review of Books, Wall Street Journal, Travel & Leisure, Conde Nast Traveler, Vogue, and The Times of London. She is a Writer-in-Residence at Amherst College. She lives in Harlem with her family.
Grace Paley (1922 – 2007) is the daughter of Ukrainian/Russian Jewish immigrants, growing up in The Bronx. Works include The Little Disturbances of Man, Enormous Changes at the Last Minute, Later the Same Day, Collected Stories, and Just As I Thought. She taught at Sarah Lawrence, Columbia University, City College of New York, and Syracuse University, and was a founder of the Teachers & Writers Collaborative. She received numerous awards and honors, including a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1961, the 1989 Edith Wharton Award, the 1994 Jewish Cultural Achievement Award for Literary Arts, the Rea Award for the Short Story in 1992, and the Vermont Award for Excellence in the Arts in 1993. In 1989, Governor Mario Cuomo declared her the first official New York State Writer. She was Vermont's Poet Laureate from 2003 to 2007. Her poetry includes Long Walks and Intimate Talks, Leaning Forward, New and Collected Poems, Begin Again, Fidelity, published posthumously in 2008, and A Grace Paley Reader: Stories, Essays, and Poetry, published in 2017. She has been called a combative pacifist. Her literary life and personal responsibilities were inseparable from her political life and human responsibilities.
Anna Uzele is a New York–based actress who recently starred in the Broadway musical New York, New York, inspired by the Martin Scorsese film of the same name, for which she was nominated for the Drama League Award for Distinguished Performance, the Outer Critics Circle Award for Outstanding Lead Performer in a Broadway Musical, and the Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Lead Performance in a Musical. On screen, Anna recently starred as Adriana on Apple TV+’s Dear Edward, based on the award-winning novel by Ann Napolitano. She previously recurred on Showtime’s City on a Hill and guest-starred on CBS’ FBI. On the stage, Uzele made her Broadway debut in Once on this Island. She starred as Catherine Parr in the North American tour and Broadway debut of Six. She and the cast were nominated for a Grammy Award for Best Musical Theater Album. Anna is a graduate of Texas State University, where she earned her BFA in musical theater.
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
“Tender,” by Cherline Bazile, from The Best American Short Stories 2023 (Mariner Books, 2023). First appeared in The Sewanee Review (Spring 2022). Copyright © 2022 by Cherline Bazile. Adapted version of the text used by permission of the author.
“The Contest” © 1958 by Grace Paley. Reprinted in The Collected Stories (1994) by Grace Paley.
