Margaret Atwood is the author of more than fifty books of fiction, poetry, and critical essays. Her novels include Cat’s Eye, The Robber Bride, Alias Grace, The Blind Assassin, and the MaddAddam trilogy. Her 1985 classic, The Handmaid’s Tale, was followed in 2019 by a sequel, The Testaments, which was a global number one bestseller and won the Booker Prize. In 2020 she published Dearly, her first collection of poetry for a decade. Atwood has won numerous awards including the Arthur C. Clarke Award for Imagination in Service to Society, the Franz Kafka Prize, the Peace Prize of the German Book Trade, the PEN USA Lifetime Achievement Award, and the Dayton Literary Peace Prize. In 2019 she was made a member of the Order of the Companions of Honour for services to literature. She has also worked as a cartoonist, illustrator, librettist, playwright, and puppeteer. Atwood’s short story collection Old Babes in the Wood was published in 2023, and her poetry collection Paper Boat: New and Selected Poems: 1961–2023 was published in 2024. Her latest work, Book of Lives: A Memoir of Sorts, is forthcoming from McClelland & Stewart this November.
René Auberjonois (1940 – 2019) won a Tony Award for his role in the musical Coco and was nominated for City of Angels, Big River, and The Good Doctor. His film and television credits included M.A.S.H., The Patriot, McCabe & Mrs. Miller, The Player, Certain Women, Blood Stripe, The Circuit, Benson, The Good Wife, Masters of Sex, Criminal Minds, It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia, Madam Secretary, The Circuit, Windows on the World, Raising Buchanan, First Cow and Star Trek: Deep Space Nine. Auberjonois was a founding member of the American Conservatory Theatre in San Francisco and a longtime Selected Shorts reader.
Becky Ann Baker has appeared on television and film in Girls, for which she received an Emmy nomination, Freaks and Geeks, Kings, The Good Wife, The Blacklist, Big Little Lies, Brockmire, Younger, Hunters, Little Voice, New Amsterdam, Billions, A Simple Plan, Lorenzo’s Oil, Sabrina, Two Weeks Notice, Nights in Rodanthe, Starbright, The Half of It, Holler, Ted Lasso, Jackpot!, The Girls on the Bus, Elsbeth, and All Happy Families. She has performed on Broadway in The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas, A Streetcar Named Desire, Titanic, Assassins, All My Sons, and Good People. Off-Broadway, she has appeared in Suddenly Last Summer at the Roundabout Theatre Company; Comedy of Errors, Othello, and Two Gentlemen of Verona at the New York Shakespeare Festival; Durang, Durang at the Manhattan Theatre Club; Barbecue at the Public Theater, and virtually in TheHomeboundProject. Forthcoming projects include the films Our Hero, Balthazar; Starbright; and Ella McCay.
Ellen Burstyn’s illustrious over sixty-year acting career encompasses film, stage, and television. She is the winner of the Academy Award for Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore; the Tony Award for Same Time, Next Year; and two Emmy Awards for Law & Order: Special Victims Unit and Political Animals, among her many nominations. Her film and television credits include The Last Picture Show, The Exorcist, Resurrection, Requiem for a Dream, Big Love, Flowers in the Attic, Interstellar, The Age of Adaline, House of Cards, Nostalgia, The Tale, American Woman, Lucy in the Sky, Pieces of a Woman, Queen Bees, Three Months, and The First Lady. Burstyn’s best-selling memoir, Lessons in Becoming Myself, was published in 2006.
A.M. Homes is the author of the novels Jack, In a County of Mothers, The End of Alice, Music for Torching, This Book Will Save Your Life, and May We Be Forgiven, winner of the Orange/Women’s Prize for Fiction. Homes is also the author of the memoir The Mistress’s Daughter and the short-story collections The Safety of Objects, Things You Should Know, and Days of Awe. Her latest novel, The Unfolding, was published in September 2022.
Zach Grenier received a Tony nomination for Moisés Kaufman’s 33 Variations for his performance as Ludwig van Beethoven. He’s known on television for portraying David Lee on CBS’s The Good Wife and its spin-off on Paramount+ The Good Fight, Mayor Feratti on Ray Donovan, and Kenton on Hulu’s Devs. Additional credits include the films She Said, Fight Club, Zodiac, Ride with the Devil, Twister, and the television series Law & Order, Deadwood, Touching Evil, and 24. Forthcoming projects include These Little Ones Perish, Her Song, and The Vizitant. His favorite stage role is Willy Loman in Death of a Salesman, which he played at the Pittsburgh Public Theater.
Jane Kaczmarek is best known for her role as Lois on Malcolm in the Middle, for which she received 7 consecutive Emmy nominations as well as nominations for the Golden Globe and SAG awards. A graduate of the University of Wisconsin and Yale School of Drama, Kaczmarek made her television debut on The Paper Chase and Hill Street Blues. On stage, she has appeared on Broadway and off, and for 6 seasons at the Williamstown Theatre Festival. Her recent theater credits include Long Day's Journey Into Night with Alfred Molina and in a co-production of Our Town with Deaf West Theatre and the 2023 Tony Award–winning Pasadena Playhouse. Kaczmarek was featured in The Changeling on Apple TV+ and the short film And Now I Lay Me Down, which was screened at the Santa Barbara Film Festival in 2024. Upcoming projects include a special four-episode reboot of Malcolm in the Middle on Disney+ and the Netflix series The Boroughs, produced by the Duffer Brothers. Her favorite job is raising her three kids and reading/hosting Selected Shorts across America.
Meg Wolitzer is the New York Times bestselling author of The Female Persuasion, The Interestings, The Ten-Year Nap, The Position, and The Wife. She is a faculty member in the Creative Writing and Literature Program at The Lichtenstein Center at Stony Brook University, where she co-founded and co-directs BookEnds, a one-year, non-credit intensive for emerging novelists. Wolitzer, who was the guest editor of The Best American Short Stories 2017, is the radio and podcast host of Symphony Space’s Selected Shorts.
CREDITS
“There Was Once” by Margaret Atwood. From Good Bones (Virago Press Limited, 1993). Originally published in Britain by Bloomsbury Publishing Ltd. 1992. Copyright © O. W. Toad Ltd 1992. Used by permission of Penguin Random House.
“Widows” and “Freeforall” are by Margaret Atwood and collected in Old Babes in the Wood (Doubleday, 2023). Copyright © 2023 by Margaret Atwood. Used by permission of the author.
