Aimee Bender is the author of The Girl in the Flammable Skirt, An Invisible Sign of My Own, Willful Creatures, The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake, The Color Master, and most recently, The Butterfly Lampshade, longlisted for the PEN/Jean Stein Award. Her short fiction has appeared in Granta, GQ, Harper’s, Tin House, McSweeney’s, and the Paris Review, among other publications, and her work has been translated into sixteen languages.
Patricia Kalember’s stage credits include The White Card, The Nerd, Losing Louie, Y2k, Don’t Dress for Dinner, Sea of Tranquility, Loose Knit, and From Above. She played the role of Gloria Steinem in Gloria: A Life in New York and Boston. She received an Outer Critics Circle nomination for her role in the original cast of The Foreigner. On television, she's had recurring roles on The Tick, Power, thirtysomething, and starred in Sisters. Other television credits include Law & Order: SVU, Power, Orange Is the New Black, Gossip Girl, Blue Bloods, Allegiance, Madam Secretary, Veep, The Good Wife, and the HBO miniseries Olive Kitteridge. Her numerous films include Jacob’s Ladder, Path to War, A Far Off Place, Signs, Rabbit Hole, The Company Men, Limitless, Girl Most Likely, and Run All Night. She can currently be seen on Power Book IV: Force.
Louise Erdrich is the author of more than a dozen novels, including Love Medicine, The Plague of Doves, The Round House, The Bingo Palace, Tales of Burning Love, The Antelope Wife, LaRose, and The Night Watchman, which won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. She has also written volumes of poetry, children’s books, short stories, and a memoir of early motherhood.
Alysia Reiner is best known for performance as FIG on all 7 seasons of Orange Is the New Black, for which she won a SAG Award. Her recent television appearances include Better Things on F/X x HULU, Shining Vale for STARZ, Ms. Marvel on Disney+, and The Rookie on ABC/Hulu. Reiner recently wrapped the features Going Places, Lie Hard, and The Independent. Reiner loves working as a changemaker for women; she recently received a Muse “Made in New York” Award from The Mayor's office & NYWIFT and is passionately committed to protecting the environment.
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.
CREDITS
“Un-Selfie” was commissioned by Symphony Space for the collection Small Odysseys: Selected Shorts Presents 35 New Stories, edited by Hannah Tinti, published by Algonquin Books. © 2022 by Symphony Space.
“Best Western” by Louise Erdrich, from The Red Convertible: Selected and New Stories (Harper, 2009). Originally appeared in Vogue (May 1990). Copyright © 1990 by Louise Erdrich. Used by permission of The Wylie Agency, LLC.
