Guest host Kirsten Vangsness presents two contemporary fables. First, Michael Cunningham reimagines the Hans Christian Andersen classic “A Wild Swan,” in a reading by Valorie Curry. Next, an excerpt from George Saunders’ touching and hilarious novella, Fox 8, read by John Cameron Mitchell.
Listen to an on-stage chat between George Saunders and Zadie Smith HERE.
First, Michael Cunningham reimagines the Hans Christian Andersen classic “A Wild Swan.” Cunningham is the author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel The Hours, which was adapted into an award-winning film. His works also include the novels A Home at the End of the World, Flesh and Blood, Specimen Days, By Nightfall, and The Snow Queen and the short story collection A Wild Swan, from which this story was taken. He is also the author Land’s End: A Walk in Provincetown. His writing has appeared in The Atlantic Monthly, Redbook, Esquire, The Paris Review, The New Yorker, and The Best American Short Stories, among other publications. Cunningham has received the PEN/Faulkner Award and a Guggenheim Fellowship, and he lectures at Yale University.
The reader is Valorie Curry, a founding member of Los Angeles’ Ovation Award-winning Coeurage Theatre Company, with which she starred in Balm in Gilead and the West Coast premiere of Shakespeare’s Double Falsehood. Additional theater credits include One Day When We Were Young at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, The Diviners at The Kennedy Center, and The Diary of Anne Frank at La Mirada Theatre for the Performing Arts. On television, she has appeared in The Following, Veronica Mars, Psych, CSI: New York, House of Lies, and currently, the Amazon series The Tick. Her film credits include Twilight: Breaking Dawn, Blair Witch, American Pastoral, After Darkness and the upcoming Inherit the Viper.She is the founder of the production company 26 Films and a member of New York’s Fundamental Theater Project.
Our second work is an excerpt from George Saunders’ touching and hilarious novella, Fox 8, which is told in the voice of a visionary fox who has learnt to understand “the Yuman voice, making words.” He’s taught himself to speak Yuman, too, leading to an odyssey of delight and danger.
George Saunders is the author of the short story collections and novellas CivilWarLand in Bad Decline, Pastoralia, In Persuasion Nation, and Tenth of December, which was a New York Times bestseller and a finalist for the National Book Award. His first novel, Lincoln in the Bardo, won the Man Booker Prize. His writing has appeared in The Best American Short Stories, The New Yorker, Harper’s, McSweeney’s, and GQ. He is the recipient of the Folio Prize, the PEN/Malamud Award, the National Magazine Award, a World Fantasy Award, and the Story Prize, as well as fellowships from the Lannan Foundation, the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the Guggenheim Foundation, and the MacArthur Foundation. In 2013, he was named one of the world's 100 most influential people by Time magazine. Saunders teaches in the creative writing program at Syracuse University.
Reader John Cameron Mitchell is the co-creator of Hedwig and the Angry Inch. He also directed the films Shortbus, Rabbit Hole and How to Talk to Girls at Parties. He's a cast member of the Hulu comedy, Shrill, starring Aidy Bryant. Recently he's been on a world tour of The Origin of Love: the Songs and Stories of Hedwig which will culminate at Town Hall for 50th Pride this coming June. He is also the creator of the podcast musical Anthem: Homunculus, co-written with Bryan Weller and featuring himself, Glenn Close, Denis O'Hare, Patti Lupone, Cynthia Erivo and Nakhane.
