Donald Barthelme (1931 – 1989) was the author of more than 20 works of fiction, nonfiction, and children’s literature, including Come Back, Dr. Caligari; City Life; Snow White; and The Dead Father. Barthelme was a longtime contributor to The New Yorker and was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship, the Rea Award for the Short Story, and served as director of PEN and the Authors Guild.
Cindy Cheung’s many television and film credits include The Flight Attendant, Billions, Thirteen Reasons Why, High Maintenance, FBI, Blindspot, The Good Fight, Blue Bloods, New Amsterdam, House of Cards, Homeland, Mistress America,Obvious Child, The Light of the Moon,The Sunlit Night, Children of Invention,Lady in the Water, Robot Stories, The Sinner, and Agent Stoker. On stage Cheung has been seen in Catch as Catch Can, Golden Shield,Tiny Beautiful Things, Log Cabin, Iowa, The Great Immensity, Middletown, The Seagull, Antigone, The Sugar House at the Edge of the Wilderness, Sides: The Fear Is Real…, and her self-penned solo show, Speak Up Connie, directed by BD Wong for the All For One Solo Festival. Cheung is a steering committee member of the Asian American Performers Action Coalition (AAPAC), a recipient of a 2022 Tony Honor for Excellence in the Theatre. She can currently be seen in the film Love in Taipei.
Nate Corddry is an actor, comedian, and writer who has recently been featured on the television series Barry, Fosse/Verdon, Mindhunter, For All Mankind, and Perry Mason, as well as the Marvel podcast Wastelanders: Black Widow. Additional film and television credits include Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip; United States of Tara; Harry’s Law; Childrens Hospital; TRON: Uprising; St. Vincent; The Heat; Mom; The Hindenburg Explodes!; The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel; The Circle; New Girl; Ghostbusters; Standing Up, Falling Down; Paper Girls; Gaslit; High School; and as a correspondent on The Daily Show. Corddry will appear in the forthcoming Apple TV+ series Sugar.
Roald Dahl (1916 – 1990) was born in Wales of Norwegian parents. After establishing himself as a writer for adults, Dahl began writing children's stories in 1960 while living in England with his family. His first stories were written as entertainment for his own children, to whom many of his books are dedicated. With more than 40 million Roald Dahl books in print in the U.S. alone, Dahl is considered one of the most beloved storytellers of our time. Although he passed away in 1990, his popularity continues to increase as his fantastic novels, including James and the Giant Peach, Matilda, The BFG, and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, delight an ever-growing legion of fans.
Roxane Gay’s writing appears in Best American Mystery Stories 2014, Best American Short Stories 2012, Best Sex Writing 2012, A Public Space, McSweeney’s, Tin House, Oxford American, American Short Fiction, Virginia Quarterly Review, and many others. She is a contributing opinion writer for The New York Times and author of the books Ayiti, An Untamed State, the New York Times bestselling Bad Feminist, the nationally bestselling Difficult Women, and the New York Times bestselling Hunger. She is also the author of World of Wakanda for Marvel. She has several books forthcoming and is at work on television and film projects. Gay also has a newsletter, The Audacity, and a podcast, The Roxane Gay Agenda. Her latest work, Opinions, was published on October 10th.
Catherine O’Hara is best known for her multi-award–winning portrayal of Moira Rose on Schitt's Creek, the Christopher Guest mocumentaries For Your Consideration, A Mighty Wind, Best in Show, and Waiting for Guffman, and as an original cast member on SCTV. Additional film and television credits include Beetlejuice, After Hours, Beetlejuice, Home Alone, Away We Go, Temple Grandin, What Lives Inside, A Series of Unfortunate Events, and The Kids in the Hall. Upcoming projects include Pain Hustlers, Agylle, and Beetlejuice 2.
Madeleine Thien is the author of the story collection Simple Recipes and three novels, Certainty, Dogs at the Perimeter, which was shortlisted for Berlin’s International Literature Prize and won the Frankfurt Book Fair’s 2015 LiBeraturpreis, and Do Not Say We Have Nothing, which won the 2016 Scotiabank Giller Prize, the 2016 Governor-General’s Literary Award for Fiction, an Edward Stanford Prize, and was shortlisted for the 2016 Man Booker Prize, the 2017 Baileys Women’s Prize for Fiction, and The Folio Prize 2017. The novel was named a New York Times Critics’ Top Book of 2016 and longlisted for a Carnegie Medal.
Meg Wolitzer is the New York Times bestselling author of The Female Persuasion, The Interestings, The Ten-Year Nap, and The Wife, among other books. She was the guest editor of The Best American Short Stories 2017, and 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
“Three Great Meals” by Donald Barthelme. From The Teachings of Don B. (Vintage, 1998). First appeared in The New Yorker (June 1, 1987). Copyright © 1987 by Donald Barthelme. Used by permission of The Wylie Agency, LLC.
"Simple Recipes" by Madeleine Thien, from Simple Recipes (Little, Brown, June 2002). Copyright (c) 2001 by Madeleine Thien. Used by permission of The Wylie Agency LLC.
“Lamb to the Slaughter” by Roald Dahl. Copyright © 1953 by Roald Dahl. First published in Harper’s Magazine (September 1953). Used by permission of David Higham Associates.
