Ben Loory’s first collection, Stories for Nighttime and Some for the Day, was a selection of the Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers Program. His second collection, Tales of Falling and Flying, was named a Favorite Book of the Year by the staff of The Paris Review and one of the 50 Best Fantasy Books of All Time by Esquire magazine. Loory’s fables and tales have appeared in The New Yorker, BOMB Magazine, Fairy Tale Review, and Electric Literature, and been heard on This American Life and at WORDTheatre. He lives and teaches short story writing in Los Angeles.
When you think of Sonia Manzano, you immediately think of children and television. Her most recent accomplishment was creating a children’s program, Alma’s Way, for PBS Kids. The series has won two Imagen Awards for Best Youth Programing, a 2022 Emmy nomination for Outstanding Writing for a Preschool Animated Program, and a 2023 NAACP nomination for an Image Award. But what Ms. Manzano is best known for performing the role of Maria on Sesame Street for 44 seasons, where her work affected the lives of millions of parents and children and garnered her two Emmy Award nominations in addition to the National Academy of Arts and Science’s Lifetime Achievement Daytime Emmy in 2016. As a writer for the show, she took home 15 Emmys. In 2022, Manzano was honored with the Beacon Award from PBS. She is also an author whose most recent Scholastic novel, Coming Up Cuban, set in 1959, follows the lives of four children who represent different intersections of race and class during the Cuban Revolution.
Haruki Murakami is an internationally acclaimed novelist, essayist, and short story writer. He was born in Kyoto in 1949 and now lives near Tokyo His work, including Norwegian Wood, Kafka on the Shore, Men Without Women, First Person Singular, and The City and Its Uncertain Walls, has been translated into more than fifty languages. Among his numerous awards, Murakami was recently honored with the Cino Del Duca World Prize, whose previous recipients include Jorge Luis Borges, Ismail Kadare, Mario Vargas Llosa, and Joyce Carol Oates. His latest novel, The Tale of Kaho, was published in July.
Javier Muñoz is an actor and activist whose impressive body of work spans theater, film, and television. He is best known for starring and co-creating the role of Alexander Hamilton in the hit musical Hamilton on Broadway for two years after Lin-Manuel Miranda departed the show (and was his alternate prior to that). He got his break starring as Usnavi in In the Heights on Broadway, also created by Miranda. Javier starred in the dark comedy indie feature Monuments, opposite David Sullivan & Marguerite Moreau, the indie feature Love Reconsidered, and in Three Months, opposite Troy Sivan and Judy Greer, on Paramount+. He voices a lead character in the Disney Jr. animated series Eureka! Additional television credits include recurring roles on Shadowhunters, Blindspot, and Full Frontal with Samantha Bee. Javier is an outspoken activist for LGBTQ+ rights, a Global Ambassador for (RED), which fights to end HIV/AIDS, and supporter of GMHC.
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
“The Duck,” by Ben Loory, from Stories for Nighttime and Some for the Day (Penguin Books, 2011). Copyright © 2011 by Ben Loory. Used by permission of the author.
“U.F.O. in Kushiro,” by Haruki Murakami, translated by Jay Rubin, as published in The New Yorker (March 21, 2011). Copyright © 2011 by Harukimurakami Archival Labyrinth. Used by permission of Creative Artists Agency.
