Lesley Nneka Arimah is the author of the short story collection What It Means When a Man Falls From the Sky, winner of the Kirkus Prize for Fiction, the Minnesota Book Award for Fiction, the New York Public Library’s Young Lions Fiction Award, and was selected for Now Read This, the New York Times/PBS book club. Her work has been featured in The New Yorker, Harper’s, McSweeney’s, and Granta. Her stories have won a National Magazine Award, the Caine Prize, and the O. Henry Prize, and she has been a National Book Foundation 5 Under 35 honoree.
Taryn Bowe’s recent work has appeared in Epoch, The Sewanee Review, Indiana Review, Bellevue Literary Review, and Joyland. She lives with her husband and daughter in Maine, where she serves as the Associate Director at the Maine Writers & Publishers Alliance. Her short fiction was featured in The Best American Short Stories 2023.
Crystal Dickinson recently starred in The Blood Quilt and Broke-ology at Lincoln Center. She won the Theatre World Award for her Broadway debut in the 2012 production of Clybourne Park and subsequently appeared in You Can’t Take It With You on Broadway in 2014. Her additional theater credits include A Raisin in the Sun, Seven Guitars, Wine in the Wilderness, and Gem of the Ocean at Two River Theater, Lessons in Survival at the Vineyard, The Low Road and Cullud Wattah at The Public, Covenant at the Roundabout, The Trees at Playwright’s Horizons, and Blues for an Alabama Sky at the McCarter. Her film and television credits include The Accidental Wolf, I Origins, The Good Wife, Feed the Beast, New Amsterdam, and recurring roles on The CHI and For Life. Dickinson has taught at Stella Adler Studio, Spelman College, Pace University, Princeton University, the Juilliard School, NYU, University of Illinois, and Seton Hall.
Edie Falco is best known for her roles as Diane Whittlesey on the HBO series Oz, Carmela Soprano on The Sopranos, and the title role of Showtime’s Nurse Jackie. For her television work she has received multiple Emmy, Golden Globe, and SAG awards, as well as the American Film Institute’s Award for Female Television Actor of the Year. Broadway credits include the Tony Award–winning play Sideman, Frankie and Johnny in The Clair De Lune, ’Night Mother, and The House of Blue Leaves, for which she received a Tony nomination. Off-broadway she has appeared in The Madrid, This Wide Night, The True, and Morning Sun. Her work in feature film includes Cost of Living, for which she received the American Film Institute’s Best Actress Award, Laws of Gravity, receiving and Independent Spirit Award nomination, Sunshine State, Landline, Hurricane, The Funeral, The Addiction, Freedomland, The Land of Steady Habits, Judy Berlin, Avatar: The Way of The Water, Fool’s Paradise, The Mother, I’ll Be Right There, Avatar: Fire and Ash and The Parenting. She can currently be seen starring alongside Jeremy Renner in Mayor of Kingstown on Paramount+.
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
“Light” by Lesley Nneka Arimah, from What It Means When a Man Falls From the Sky (Penguin Random House, 2017). First appeared in Granta (2015). Copyright © 2015 by Lesley Nneka Arimah. Used by permission of Georges Borchardt, Inc.
“Camp Emeline,” by Taryn Bowe, from The Best American Short Stories 2023 (Mariner Books, 2023). First appeared in Indiana Review (Vol. 44, No. 1, Spring 2022). Copyright © 2022 by Taryn Bowe. Adapted version of the text used by permission of the author.
