Greg Ames is the author of Buffalo Lockjaw, a novel that won a NAIBA Book of the Year Award, and Funeral Platter, a collection of twenty short stories, including several that have been featured on Selected Shorts. His work has appeared in Best American Nonrequired Reading,Southern Review, McSweeney’s, The Sun, Catapult, and North American Review, among many others. He teaches in the English department at Colgate University.
Kali Fajardo-Anstine is the author of the national bestselling novel Woman of Light and the story collection Sabrina & Corina, a finalist for the National Book Award and winner of an American Book Award. She is the 2021 recipient of the Addison M. Metcalf Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and she has written for the New York Times, The Atlantic, Harper’s Bazaar, ELLE, O: the Oprah Magazine, and elsewhere. Born and raised in Denver, Colorado, she is the 2022-2024 Endowed Chair in Creative Writing at Texas State University.
Sonia Manzano is a groundbreaking educator, executive television producer, and award-winning children’s book author. A first-generation mainland Puerto Rican, she created the part of Maria on Sesame Street, for which she received an Emmy Lifetime Achievement Award. Manzano has also received 15 Emmys for writing, the Congressional Hispanic Caucus Award, the Hispanic Heritage Award for Education, and a Poderosa—most powerful woman award—from People en Espanol. Her critically acclaimed children’s books include A World Together, No Dogs Allowed!, A Box Full of Kittens, Miracle on 133rd Street, The Revolution of Evelyn Serrano, and the memoir Becoming Maria. She created an animated series for PBS entitled Alma's Way. Manzano’s latest novel, Coming Up Cuban, was released in August 2022.
Maulik Pancholy is an actor, author, and activist. He is best known for his television roles on 30 Rock, Weeds, Whitney, The Good Fight, Only Murders in the Building, and for lending his voice to the long-running animated series Phineas & Ferb and Sanjay & Craig. He starred on Broadway in Bess Wohl's Grand Horizons and in Terrence McNally’s It's Only a Play, and recently in 2nd Stage's Off-Broadway production of To My Girls. Pancholy’s debut novel, The Best at It, was named a 2020 Stonewall Honor Book and is being developed for television at HBOMax. His second novel, Nikhil Out Loud, was released in October 2022. Pancholy is the co-founder of the anti-bullying organization ActToChange.org.
Meg Wolitzer is the New York Times bestselling author of The Female Persuasion, The Interestings, The Ten-Year Nap, and The Wife, which was adapted to film in 2018, starring Glenn Close and Jonathan Pryce. She was the guest editor of The Best American Short Stories 2017, and has also published books for young readers, mostly recently a picture book, Millions of Maxes. Wolitzer 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
“A Love Letter” by Greg Ames, from Funeral Platter (Arcade, 2017). Copyright © 2017 by Greg Ames. Used by permission of the author.
“Sugar Babies” by Kali Fajardo-Anstine, from Sabrina & Corina (One World, 2019). Copyright © 2019 by Kali Fajardo-Anstine. Used by permission of Watkins/Loomis Agency, Inc.
