Intervention

Ophira Eisenberg is a standup comedian, writer, and the host of the new comedy podcast Parenting Is a Joke with iHeart Radio and Pretty Good Friends. She also hosted NPR’s Ask Me Another, where she interviewed hundreds of celebrities, including Sir Patrick Stewart, Rosie Perez, Yo-Yo Ma, Awkwafina, Roxane Gay, Nick Kroll, Chelsea Handler, and more. She’s appeared multiple times on CBS’s The Late Late Show, Comedy Central, and is regular host and teller on The Moth Radio Hour, and her stories are included in three of The Moth’s best-selling collections, including the most recent: How to Tell a Story: The Essential Guide to Memorable Storytelling from The Moth. Her memoir, Screw Everyone: Sleeping My Way to Monogamy, was optioned for a television series, and her new comedy special, Plant-Based Jokes, is streaming on YouTube.

Langston Hughes (1902 – 1967) wrote nearly fifty books of poetry, prose, and drama and is particularly known for his portrayals of Black American experience from the twenties through the sixties. His writing engages with jazz and blues and he shaped the artistic contributions of the Harlem Renaissance of the 1920s. Among his countless notable works are the poetry collections The Weary Blues and Montage of a Dream Deferred; the “Simple” books of prose; his acclaimed autobiography The Big Sea, and the play Mule Bone, co-authored with Zora Neale Hurston. His residence at 20 East 127th Street in Harlem is a New York City Preservation Commission landmark.

Miranda July is the author of the short story collection No One Belongs Here More Than You, winner of the Frank O’Connor International Short Story Award, the nonfiction collection It Chooses You, and the novel The First Bad Man. Her fiction has appeared in The Paris Review, Harper’s, and The New Yorker. July directed and starred in the films The Future and Me and You and Everyone We Know, which won a special jury prize at the Sundance Film Festival and the Camera d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival, and Kajillionaire. July’s videos, performances, web-based projects, and sculptures have been presented at MoMA, the Guggenheim, the Whitney Museum, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, and the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles. July’s latest novel, All Fours, will be published in May 2024.

Parker Posey has appeared in many independent films—Broken English, Price Check, Party Girl, The House of Yes, Fay Grimm, Clockwatchers, and Columbus—to name a few. Most people know her from the Christopher Guest movies, such as Waiting for Guffman and Best in Show. She’s done a few Hollywood movies like Superman Returns, Blade Trinity, and Josie and the Pussycats. She published her first book, You’re on an Airplane, which became a national best seller. From 2018 - 21, she starred in the reboot of Lost in Space. Posey was featured on Dick Wolf’s podcast, Hunted, and recent projects include High Fidelity, The Staircase, Tales of the Walking Dead, and Beau Is Afraid. Her forthcoming projects include The Parenting, and Bream Gives Me Hiccups. Onstage, Posey recently starred in The Seagull/Woodstock, NY, with The New Group.

Simon Rich is a frequent contributor to The New Yorker. He has written for Saturday Night Live, Pixar, and The Simpsons and is the creator of the TV shows Man Seeking Woman and Miracle Workers, which he based on his books. His other collections include Ant Farm, Spoiled Brats, New Teeth, and Hits and Misses, which won the Thurber Prize for American Humor.

Pauletta Pearson Washington can currently be seen in the Kerry Washington–produced legal drama Reasonable Doubt on Hulu. She previously appeared in the anthology film Tell It Like a Woman, National Geographic’s Genius: Aretha, and season 2 of Spike Lee’s Netflix series She’s Gotta Have It. Additional film credits include Steps, The Real MVP: The Wanda Durant Story, The Watsons Go to Birmingham, Beloved, Purlie, and Wilma. She was also a featured vocalist on the soundtrack for Philadelphia and a featured pianist in the soundtrack for Antwone Fisher. Washington has appeared on Broadway in Jesus Christ Superstar, Sophisticated Ladies, Shakespeare’s Cabaret, The All Night Strut!, and as an understudy to Lynne Thigpen in Tintypes. Her off-Broadway credits include Love, Loss, and What I Wore; Desperate Writers at the Union Square Theater; Soul Possessed at The Kennedy Center; Spiritual, A Christmas Show at Lincoln Center, A Night of Inspiration at Carnegie Hall; Two Trains Running with True Colors Theater Company; and The Old Settler at the Billie Holiday Theater. Washington was part of the original cast and touring company of Jerry’s Girls, and she has also created and performed her own one-woman show for both domestic and international audiences.

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

“Thank You M’am” is by Langston Hughes and is used by permission of the Estate of Langston Hughes and International Literary Properties.

“Relapse,” by Simon Rich, from Hits and Misses: Stories (Little, Brown and Company, 2018). Copyright © 2018 by Simon Rich. Used by permission of the author.

"The Swim Team," by Miranda July, from No One Belongs Here More Than You (Scribner, 2007). Copyright © 2007 by Miranda July. Used by permission of The Wylie Agency, LLC.