New York Stories

F. Murray Abraham has appeared in more than 80 films, including Amadeus, for which he received the Academy Award for Best Actor, as well as Golden Globe and L.A. Film Critics awards. Additional films include House of Geraniums, The Bridge of San Luis Rey, Where Love Begins, The Name of the Rose, Finding Forrester, Scarface, The Bonfire of the Vanities, The Ritz, Star Trek: Insurrection, The Grand Budapest Hotel, Inside Llewyn Davis, Robin Hood, How to Train Your Dragon 3, Lady and the Tramp, Things Heard & Seen, and forthcoming, The Magic Flute. His television appearances include Journey to the Center of the Earth, Marco Polo,The Good Wife, The Good Fight, Louis CK, Curb Your Enthusiasm, Homeland, for which he received two Emmy nominations, Shakespeare Uncovered, Chimerica for the BBC, and Mythic Quest. A veteran of the stage, Abraham has appeared in more than 90 plays, among them Uncle Vanya, Trumbo, Standup Shakespeare, the Italian tour of Notturno Pirandelliano, Susan Stroman's A Christmas Carol, Angels In America, and the title roles in Cyrano de Bergerac, King Lear, Macbeth, Richard III, and The Jew of Malta. He made his LA debut in Ray Bradbury's The Wonderful Ice Cream Suit and his New York debut as a Macy's Santa Claus, soon thereafter to Broadway in The Man in the Glass Booth, directed by Harold Pinter. Honors include The Moscow Art Theatre Stanislavski Award, The Sir John Gielgud Award for Excellence in Shakespeare, Obie Award for Lifetime Achievement, and a member of The New York Theater Hall of Fame. Abraham is a spokesman for the MultiFaith Alliance for Syrian Refugees and the author of A Midsummer Night's Dream: Actors On Shakespeare.

Kate Burton was nominated for Tony Awards for her work in Hedda Gabler, The Elephant Man, and The Constant Wife. Additional Broadway credits include Spring Awakening, The Beauty Queen of Leenane, Jake’s Women, Company, Some Americans Abroad, and most recently, Present Laughter. Her film credits include Big Trouble in Little China; The Ice Storm; Unfaithful; 2 Days in New York; Liberal Arts; 127 Hours; Where'd You Go, Bernadette?; and Before/During/After. On television, she has appeared in multiple Law and Orders, Empire Falls, Rescue Me, Veep, Grimm, Modern Family, Supergirl, The Gifted, Strange Angel, Scandal, Perfect Harmony, Homeland, Charmed, 13 Reasons Why, and Grey's Anatomy, for which she has received numerous Emmy nominations. Burton has directed at the LA Philharmonic and is a professor at the University of Southern California.

Wyatt Cenac is an Emmy Award-winning comedian, actor, producer, and writer known for the HBO late-night comedy docuseries Wyatt Cenac’s Problem Areas. Additional credits include the Emmy nominated web series aka Wyatt Cenac, which he created, directed, and starred in, the TBS sitcom People of the Earth and The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, where he served as a writer and correspondent. He's made four comedy albums: Wyatt Cenac: Comedy Person, the Grammy nominated Brooklyn, Furry Dumb Fighter, and One Angry Night in November, and hosted the televised stand-up variety series Night Train with Wyatt Cenac. He started his career in animation as a writer for Mike Judge's King of the Hill, and has served as a consultant for South Park. Every now and again he pops up in a film, most notably Barry Jenkins’ Medicine for Melancholy.

Victor Hernández Cruz was born in Aguas Buenas, Puerto Rico. He moved to New York City with his family when he was five years old. At 17, he self-published his first book, Papo Got His Gun! And Other Poems, on a mimeograph machine. Since then, he has published numerous collections, including Beneath the Spanish; In the Shadow of Al-Andalus; The Mountain in the Sea; Red Beans; Rhythm, Content, and Flavor: New and Selected Poems; By Lingual Wholes; and Snaps. He has received fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts. From 2018 to 2013, he served as a Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets. Cruz is a co-founder of the Before Columbus Foundation, a nonprofit organization that promotes the recognition of multicultural writers.

Vinson Cunningham joined The New Yorker as a staff writer in 2016. Since 2019, he has served as a theater critic for the magazine. In 2020, he was a finalist for a National Magazine Award for his Profile of the comedian Tracy Morgan. His writing on books, art, and culture has appeared in the Times Magazine, the Times Book Review, Vulture, The Awl, The Fader, and McSweeney’s, where he wrote a column called “Field Notes from Gentrified Places.” Cunningham previously served as a staff assistant at the Obama White House.

Victor LaValle is the author of the short story collection Slapboxing with Jesus, four novels, The Ecstatic, Big Machine, The Devil in Silver, and The Changeling, two novellas, Lucretia and the Kroons and The Ballad of Black Tom, and the graphic novel Destroyer. He has been the recipient of numerous awards and honors, including a Whiting Writers’ Award, a World Fantasy Award, a Bram Stoker Award, a United States Artists Ford Fellowship, a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Shirley Jackson Award, an American Book Award, and the key to Southeast Queens. LaValle’s fiction and nonfiction has appeared in Granta, GQ, Essence, The Fader, and The Washington Post, among other publications.

Colum McCann is the author of the novels Apeirogon, TransAtlantic, Let the Great World Spin, Zoli, Dancer, This Side of Brightness, and Songdogs, as well as the story collections Everything in this Country Must, Fishing the Sloe-Black River, and Thirteen Ways of Looking. Born and raised in Dublin, Ireland, he has been the recipient of many international honors, including the National Book Award, the International Dublin Impac Prize, a Chevalier des Arts et Lettres from the French government, election to the Irish Arts Academy, several European awards, the 2010 Best Foreign Novel Award in China, and an Oscar nomination. His work has been published in over 40 languages. He is the co-founder of the non-profit global story exchange organization, Narrative 4, and he teaches at the MFA program in Hunter College.

Sonia Manzano is a groundbreaking Latina educator, executive television producer, and award-winning children’s book author. A first-generation mainland Puerto Rican, she has affected the lives of millions of parents and children since the early 1970s, when she was offered the opportunity to play Maria on Sesame Street, for which she received an Emmy Lifetime Achievement Award in 2016. Manzano has also received 15 Emmys for writing, the Congressional Hispanic Caucus Award, the Hispanic Heritage Award for Education. 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: Love and Chaos in the South Bronx. Manzano recently signed a multi-book publishing program with Scholastic.

Toni Morrison (1931 - 2019) was the celebrated author of the novels The Bluest Eye, Sula, Song of Solomon, Tar Baby, Beloved, Jazz, Home, and God Help the Child, among others. Song of Solomon was the winner of the 1978 National Book Critics’ Circle Award. She was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in 1988 for Beloved, which was subsequently adapted into a film. Morrison authored and edited several nonfiction books, including Playing in the Dark: Whiteness and the Literary Imagination; Race-ing Justice, En-gendering Power: Essays on Anita Hill, Clarence Thomas, and the Construction of Social Reality; Birth of a Nation'hood: Gaze, Script, and Spectacle in the O.J. Simpson Case; Remember: The Journey to School Integration; and Burn This Book: Notes on Literature and Engagement. She is the subject of the documentary Toni Morrison: The Pieces I Am. Morrison’s papers are part of the permanent library collections of Princeton University. Among Morrison’s numerous honors are the 1996 National Book Foundation's Medal of Distinguished Contribution to American Letters, the Norman Mailer Prize for Lifetime Achievement, the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the PEN/Saul Bellow Award for Achievement in American Fiction, the Edward MacDowell Medal, and several honorary doctorates. In 1994, she was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature.

Karen Pittman is an accomplished actress in American theater, television, and cinema. She has originated many theater roles, including Jory in Ayad Akhtar’s Pulitzer Prize-winning Tony-nominated play, Disgraced, of which she received the 2015 Theatre World Award. Her most recent cinematic release, the award-winning Pipeline, was adapted from a play in which she starred in at Lincoln Center; she was nominated for both an Outstanding Lead Actress’ Lucille Lortel Award and Broadway League’s Distinguished Performance Award. She originated the role of Charlotte in Claudia Rankine’s The White Card in its debut production in collaboration with ArtsEmerson and American Repertory Theatre, at The Paramount Theatre. She has worked in numerous Broadway and off-Broadway plays in New York City, and in regional theatres across the country. Pittman is best known for her role as Mia Jordan on Apple TV’s Golden Globe-nominated show The Morning Show, for her role as Lisa on FX’s award-winning series The Americans, and as Priscilla Ridley on Marvel’s Luke Cage on Netflix. She has starred in numerous television shows, including The Blacklist, Girlfriends Guide, Horace and Pete, Madam Secretary, Blindspot, Elementary, House of Cards, Law & Order, and more. She has also starred in the films Detroit, Custody, The Rewrite, and Begin Again. In the Summer of 2019, she recurred in AMC’s NOS4A2 with Zachary Quinto and starred alongside Paul Rudd in the Netflix television series Living with Yourself. In 2020, she appeared on the final season of Showtime’s Homeland, and portrays Willa Hays on Paramount TV’s most watched television series, Yellowstone. Pittman can be seen in the forthcoming films What We Do Next and Allies.

Anika Noni Rose won the Tony Award for Caroline, or Change and was nominated for a Tony for A Raisin in the Sun. Additional stage credits include Footloose, Eli’s Coming, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, Carmen Jones, for which she won a Lucille Lortel Award, the Encores! production of Purlie, and the New York Philharmonic's production of Company. Television credits include The Good Wife, The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency, Power, the miniseries Roots, The Quad, Little Fires Everywhere, and the upcoming Them: Covenant. Rose’s film credits include Dreamgirls; The Princess & The Frog; For Colored Girls; Half of a Yellow Sun; Everything, Everything; Assassination Nation; The Killing of Kenneth Chamberlain; and Jingle Jangle: A Christmas Journey. Currently shooting Netflix's Maid, as well as Let the Right One In and Pantheon, Rose is a three-time NAACP Image Award nominee and a Disney Legend.