Ophira Eisenberg is a standup comedian, writer, and host of the award-winning comedy podcast Parenting Is a Joke. She also hosted NPR’s Ask Me Another, where she interviewed and played silly games with hundreds of celebrities including Sir Patrick Stewart, Rosie Perez, Yo-Yo Ma, Awkwafina, Roxanne Gay, Nick Kroll, Chelsea Handler, and more. She’s appeared multiple times on CBS’s The Late Late Show, Sherri! with Sherri Sheppard, Comedy Central, HBO, The New Yorker Festival, and is regular on The Moth Radio Hour. Her stories are included in three of The Moth’s best-selling collections. Her memoir, Screw Everyone: Sleeping My Way to Monogamy, was optioned for a TV series, and her comedy special Plant- Based Jokes is streaming on YouTube. Eisenberg is a regular at The Comedy Cellar and other New York clubs, and her solo show, Leaving A Mark: A Comedy About Scars, made its Off-Broadway debut to rave reviews and won the Women in the Arts & Media Award for Solo Show Scripts.
Nathan Englander is the author of The Ministry of Special Cases, For the Relief of Unbearable Urges, What We Talk About When We Talk About Anne Frank, a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize, Dinner at the Center of the Earth, and kaddish.com, which was longlisted for the Wingate Prize, 2020 and the Simpson/Joyce Carol Oates Literary Prize honoring a mid-career writer. He also translated The New American Haggadah. Englander’s short story What We Talk About When We Talk About Anne Frank was recently adapted into a play, with a world premiere at San Diego’s Globe Theatre and a successful run in London’s West End.
Etgar Keret was born in Ramat Gan and now lives in Tel Aviv. A winner of the French Chevalier des Arts et des Lettres, he is the author of the memoir The Seven Good Years and story collections like Fly Already. His work has been translated into forty-five languages and has appeared in The New Yorker, The Wall Street Journal, The Paris Review, and The New York Times. Autocorrect was published on May 27th.
Andy Richter is an actor/writer/game show host who played Conan O’Brien’s TV wife for many years. He currently hosts a podcast called The Three Questions.
Ernie Wang is a second-generation Chinese-Japanese-American. He grew up on U.S. military bases in Japan. His short fiction appears in Chicago Quarterly Review, The Georgia Review, McSweeney’s, Mississippi Review, Prairie Schooner, The Southern Review, Story, and elsewhere. He holds degrees in creative writing from the University of Houston and University of Nevada, Las Vegas. Wang works for the Defense Logistics Agency at Aberdeen Proving Ground.
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.
BD Wong has won all five New York theater awards, including the Drama Desk Award, Outer Critics Circle Award, Theater World Award, Clarence Derwent Award, and Tony Award, for his Broadway debut in M. Butterfly, an achievement not yet duplicated by another actor for the same role. He has since appeared in numerous Broadway, off-Broadway, and regional theater productions. Wong has appeared in more than 20 feature films, most notably including Heart of Stone, Bird Box, three Jurassic World films, Focus, Mulan 1 & 2, Seven Years in Tibet, Father of the Bride 1 & 2, and Jurassic Park, among others. On television, he has appeared in The Girls on the BusAwkwafina Is Nora From Queens, Mr. Robot, for which he received both Emmy and Critics’ Choice Award nominations, American Horror Story: Apocalypse, Gotham, Madam Secretary, CSI: New Orleans, 11 seasons of Law & Order: SVU,Oz, All-American Girl, and more. He has been recognized by the Asian American Legal Defense and Education Fund, Asian American Journalists Association, Asian AIDS Project, GLAAD, National Gay and Lesbian Task Force, The Anti-Violence Project, Lambda Legal, Museum of Chinese in America, and Marriage Equality New York for his presence and participation in the community. He sits on the Board of Trustees of The Entertainment Community Fund (formerly The Actors’ Fund), American Conservatory Theatre, and Rosie’s Theater Kids.
CREDITS
“Poor Little Egg-Boy Hatched in a Shul,” by Nathan Englander. First published in McSweeney’s Quarterly Concern (Issue 28, September 2008) © by Nathan Englander. Broadcast by permission of Nathan Englander and Aragi Inc. All rights reserved.
“Crumb Cake” by Etgar Keret, translated by Sondra Silverston, from McSweeney's (Issue 51, 2017). Copyright © 2017 by Etgar Keret. Used by permission of The Wylie Agency, LLC.
“Stay Brave, My Hercules,” by Ernie Wang, from McSweeney’s Quarterly Concern (Issue 51, December 2017). Copyright © 2017 by Ernie Wang. Used by permission of the author.
