Guest host Sonia Manzano presents two stories about identity, appearance, and longing. In Elizabeth Crane’s “Blue Girl,” a young woman learns how to embrace difference. The reader is Valorie Curry. “Different” is certainly how you’d describe the folktale character Rumplestiltskin, but in Michael Cunningham’s remix, that doesn’t keep him from wanting a normal life. Zach Grenier reads “Little Man.”
Artists and Writers:
Elizabeth Crane is the author of the short story collections Turf, When the Messenger Is Hot, which was adapted for the stage by Chicago’s Steppenwolf Theater company, All this Heavenly Glory, and You Must Be This Happy to Enter, as well as the novels We Only Know So Much, which was adapted into a feature film, and The History of Great Things. Her work has been featured in numerous publications and anthologies, and she is a recipient of the Chicago Public Library 21st Century Award. Crane teaches in the UCR-Palm Desert low-residency MFA program.
Michael Cunningham is the author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel The Hours, which was adapted into an award-winning film. His works also include the novels A Home at the End of the World, Flesh and Blood, Specimen Days, By Nightfall, The Snow Queen, and the short story collection A Wild Swan, as well as the nonfiction Land’s End: A Walk in Provincetown. His writing has appeared in The Atlantic Monthly, Redbook, Esquire, The Paris Review, The New Yorker, and The Best American Short Stories, among other publications. Cunningham has received the Whiting Award, the PEN/Faulkner Award, and a Guggenheim Fellowship, and he lectures at Yale University.
Valorie Curry is a founding member of Los Angeles’ Ovation Award-winning Coeurage Theatre Company, with which she starred in Balm in Gilead and the West Coast premiere of Shakespeare’s Double Falsehood. Additional theater credits include One Day When We Were Young at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, The Diviners at The Kennedy Center, and The Diary of Anne Frank at La Mirada Theatre for the Performing Arts. On television, she has appeared in The Following, Veronica Mars, Psych, CSI: New York, House of Lies, and the Amazon series The Tick. Her film credits include Twilight: Breaking Dawn, Blair Witch, American Pastoral, After Darkness, and Inherit the Viper. She is the founder of the production company 26 Films and a member of New York’s Fundamental Theater Project.
Zach Grenier is most often recognized for his role as David Lee on The Good Wife. He has also played series regulars on BrainDead, C16:FBI, and Touching Evil, had recurring roles on 24 and Deadwood, and has most recently appeared in The Good Fight, Blindspot, Ray Donovan, and God Friended Me. His film credits include A Shock to the System, Tommy Boy, Donnie Brasco, Fight Club, Zodiac, J. Edgar, and Crown Heights. His stage credits include Cromwell in A Man for All Seasons at the Roundabout Theatre Company and the role of Dick Cheney in David Hare’s Stuff Happens at the New York Shakespeare Festival, and he was nominated for a Tony Award for his portrayal of Beethoven in Moisés Kaufman’s 33 Variations. Grenier will appear in the forthcoming film The Vizitant and the forthcoming television series Devs.
Sonia Manzano is known to millions as Maria on Sesame Street, a character she played from 1971 to 2015, and has earned fifteen Emmy Awards as a writer for the show. Her theater credits include The Exonerated; Love, Loss, and What I Wore; and the original production of Godspell. She is the author of the picture books No Dogs Allowed!; A Box Full of Kittens; and Miracle on 133rd Street, as well as the middle grade novel The Revolution of Evelyn Serrano and her memoir, Becoming Maria: Love and Chaos in the South Bronx. In 2016, Manzano received a Lifetime Achievement Award at the 43rd Annual Daytime Emmy Awards. Recently, Manzano has been featured in the television series The Loud House and its spinoff The Casagrandes.
