Jamaica Kincaid’s works include the short story collection At the Bottom of the River, which was nominated for the PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction, the nonfiction books A Small Place, Talk Stories, and Among Flowers, and the novels Annie John, Lucy, The Autobiography of My Mother, Mr. Potter, and See Now Then. Kincaid’s fiction has appeared in numerous publications, including The Paris Review and The New Yorker, where she worked as a staff writer for twenty years. She has received the Lannan Literary Award for Fiction, the Prix Femina Étranger, the Anisfield-Wolf Book Award, the Lila Wallace-Reader’s Digest Award, and the Dan David Prize in Literature. Kincaid is currently the Professor of African and African American Studies in Residence at Harvard.
Emily Skeggs was nominated for Tony and Grammy awards for her work in Fun Home on Broadway. Her off-Broadway and regional theater credits include Take Me Along and Transport at the Irish Repertory Theatre, David Cromer’s Our Town with the Huntington Theatre Company, and Naomi Wallace’s And IandSilence at the Signature Theatre Company. Film and television credits include WGN’s Salem, When We Rise, Love You to Death, The Ultimate Playlist of Noise, and Dinner in America.
Laurine Towler made her Broadway debut in Lettice and Lovage with Dame Maggie Smith, and appeared in the national tour with Julie Harris. She also toured nationally with The Tap Dance Kid. Her film and television credits include Woody Allen’s Celebrity and Small Time Crooks, People I Know with Al Pacino, Uptown Girls, Law & Order: SVU, Molly Gunn, The Sopranos, St. Elsewhere, and Brother to Brother. Towler is a social justice activist and has been a teaching artist with Morningside Center, Lincoln Center, The Roundabout Theatre Company, and Symphony Space.
Laura van den Berg is the author of the story collections I Hold a Wolf By the Ears, What the World Will Look Like When All the Water Leaves Us, There Will Be No More Good Nights Without Good Nights, and The Isle of Youth, and the novels Find Me and The Third Hotel, which was a finalist for the New York Public Library Young Lions Fiction Award and an Indie Next pick, and was named a best book of 2018 by more than a dozen publications. She is the recipient of a Rosenthal Family Foundation Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the Bard Fiction Prize, a PEN/O. Henry Award, and a MacDowell Colony Fellowship, and is a two-time finalist for the Frank O'Connor International Short Story Award.
Meg Wolitzer is the New York Times bestselling author of The Female Persuasion, The Interestings, The Ten-Year Nap, and The Wife, among other books. She was the guest editor of The Best American Short Stories 2017, and 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
"My Mother" by Jamaica Kincaid, from At the Bottom of the River by Jamaica Kincaid. Copyright © 1983 by Jamaica Kincaid. Used by arrangement with Farrar, Straus & Giroux, Inc. All rights reserved.
“Lessons” by Laura van ben Berg, from Isle of Youth: Stories (FSG Originals, 2013). Copyright © 2013 by Laura van den Berg. Used by permission of Curtis Brown, Ltd.
