In a career spanning more than seventy years, Ray Bradbury (1920 - 2012) inspired generations of readers to dream, think, and create. A prolific author of hundreds of short stories and close to fifty books, as well as numerous poems, essays, operas, plays, teleplays, and screenplays, Bradbury was one of the most celebrated writers of our time. His groundbreaking works include Fahrenheit 451, The Martian Chronicles, The Illustrated Man, Dandelion Wine, and Something Wicked This Way Comes. He wrote the screenplay for John Huston's classic film adaptation of Moby Dick and was nominated for an Academy Award. He adapted sixty-five of his stories for television's The Ray Bradbury Theater and won an Emmy for his teleplay of The Halloween Tree. Bradbury was the recipient of the 2000 National Book Foundation Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters, the 2004 National Medal of Arts, and the 2007 Pulitzer Prize Special Citation, among many honors.
Mike Doyle has appeared on screen in New Amsterdam, City on a Hill, The Romanoffs, Law & Order: Special Victims Unit, The Accidental Wolf, Narcos: Mexico, Jersey Boys, The Invitation, Green Lantern,Fallout, The Greatest, and Law & Order among others. His stage credits include The New Century at Lincoln Center and Betrayed with the Culture Project. Doyle wrote and directed the feature films Almost Love starring Kate Walsh, Patricia Clarkson, and Scott Evans, and Passing Through, in which he also stars with Kevin Daniels and Amy Ryan. His next film, Bookends, stars F. Murray Abraham and Caroline Aaron.
Allan Gurganus is the author of the novels Plays Well With Others, The Oldest Living Confederate Widow Tells All, and Local Souls; a collection of novellas, The Practical Heart; and a collection of short stories, White People, which was nominated for a PEN/Faulkner Prize. He has received the Sue Kaufman Prize from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, and the Southern Book Prize. His stories have been anthologized in The Best American Short Stories, The O. Henry Prize Stories and the Norton Anthology of American Short Fiction. Guraganus edited New Stories from the South: The Year’s Best 2006, and his most recent work is The Uncollected Stories of Allan Gurganus.
Marian Seldes (1928 - 2014) was a presence in film, television, and the theater for more than 60 years. A five-time Tony Award nominee, she performed on Broadway in Dinner at Eight, The Play About the Baby, The Butterfly Collection, Ring Around the Moon, Ivanov, Medea, Ondine, Father's Day, A Delicate Balance, for which she earned a Tony Award, and Deuce, among others. Her numerous film and television credits include Westinghouse Studio One, The Greatest Story Ever Told, Alfred Hitchcock Presents: Design for Loving, Truman, Sex and the City, Home Alone 3, and The Extra Man. Seldes was inducted into the Theater Hall of Fame 1996. In 2006, she received the Drama League’s Unique Contribution to the Theatre Award, and in 2010, she received the Special Tony Award for Lifetime Achievement.
Thom Sesma has appeared on screen in Instinct, Jessica Jones, Madam Secretary, The Good Wife, and more. His Broadway and national tour credits include Dead Outlaw, Face Value, The Lion King, Man of La Mancha, and Miss Saigon. Among his many off-Broadway credits are A Sherlock Carol at New World Stages, Letters of Suresh at Second Stage, and Unknown Soldier at Playwrights Horizons, the title role in Sweeney Todd at the Barrow Street Theatre, and A Man of No Importance at Classic Stage Company.
Hoshi Shin’ichi (1926 – 1997) was a Japanese novelist and science fiction writer. He published more than 1,000 of his signature "short-short" stories. Hoshi's most famous book is Bokko-chan. His other works include the collection Oi-detakoi and the novel Koe no ami. Shin’ichi won the Mystery Writers of Japan Award for his book Mōsō Ginkō in 1968.
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. The Interestings is currently being adapted as a musical, with a book by Sarah Ruhl and music and lyrics by Sara Bareilles. 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
“Shoulder-Top Secretary,” by Hoshi Shin’ichi, copyright © 1971 by the Hoshi Library. First published in Japan in 1971 in Bokko-chan by Shinchōsha Publishing Company Ltd and reprinted in The Penguin Book of Japanese Short Stories). English translation of “Shoulder-Top Secretary” is copyright of Jay Rubin, 2018. Permission to record the translation is granted by Penguin Books Limited.
"It Had Wings," by Allan Gurganus, from White People (Alfred A. Knopf, 1991). Copyright © 1991 by Allan Gurganus. Used by permission of International Creative Management.
“The Toynbee Convector,” by Ray Bradbury. First published in Playboy © 1983 by Ray Bradbury. Read and performed with the permission of Don Congdon Associates, Inc.
