O. Henry at 100

ACTORS & ARTISTS

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie is the author of the award-winning novels Purple Hibiscus, Half of a Yellow Sun, and Americanah, as well as the short story collection The Thing Around Your Neck, the essay We Should All Be Feminists, and most recently the collection Dear Ijeawele, or A Feminist Manifesto in Fifteen Suggestions. Her work has been featured in The New Yorker, Granta, The New York Times Book Review, and Zoetrope, among other publications. She was awarded a MacArthur Genius Grant in 2008 and was conferred a Doctor of Humane Letters, Honoris Causa, by Johns Hopkins University in 2016.

Michael Cerveris is the Tony Award-winning star of Fun Home and Assassins. Additional Broadway credits include Sweeney Todd, The Who's Tommy, Evita, Titanic, LoveMusik, Road Show, Nine Lives, Sarah Ruhl's In the Next Room (or the vibrator play), and many others. Off-broadway, he has appeared in King Lear, Cymbeline, Hedda Gabler, and Nassim. His film and television credits include Fringe, Treme, Madam Secretary, The Good Wife, Detours, The Tick, Gotham, Mosaic, Ant-Man and the Wasp, Elementary, Mindhunter, The Blacklist, Evil, and The Plot Against America. Cerveris also works as a musician, both solo and with his band, Loose Cattle.

Mia Dillon is a Tony-nominated stage actress whose Broadway credits include Our Town, The Miser, The Corn Is Green, Hay Fever, Agnes of God, Once a Catholic, Crimes of the Heart, and Da. She has worked extensively off-Broadway and regionally from San Diego to Dublin, including her most recent appearance at The Hartford Stage in The Engagement Party. Previously at Hartford Stage she appeared in the world premiere of Seder, as well as Cloud Nine and A Song at Twilight. Her work has been honored with the CT Critics Circle Award, a Drama Desk nomination, the Clarence Derwent Award, a Barrymore Award nomination, and a Dramalogue Award. Film and TV appearances include all three Law & Orders, Brain Dead, The Jury, Mary and Rhoda, Gods and Generals, The Money Pit, Isn't It Delicious, Ordinary World, and All Good Things. Dillon has been a reader for Selected Shorts and Bloomsday at Symphony Space for more than 30 years.

Josh Hamilton’s theater credits on and off-Broadway include Annie Baker’s The Antipodes at the Signature Theater and Wallace Shawn’s Evening at the Talkhouse at the National in London, This Is Our Youth, The Waverly Gallery, Proof, Hurlyburly, The Coast of Utopia, Things We Want, Three Sisters, Medieval Play, Dead Accounts, The Cherry Orchard, The Real Thing, and The Bridge Project. His film and television credits include Kicking and Screaming, Alive, Outsourced, Away We Go, Frances Ha, American Horror Story: Coven, Margaret, Gracepoint, Madam Secretary, Manchester by the Sea, Dark Skies, 13 Reasons Why, Eighth Grade, Blaze, Ray Donovan, Mrs. Fletcher, and Tesla. Hamilton will appear in the forthcoming projects Tonight at Noon, False Positive, and The Map of Tiny Perfect Things.

Grace Paley’s (1922 - 2007) works include The Little Disturbances of Man, Enormous Changes at the Last Minute, Later the Same Day, and Collected Stories. She taught at Sarah Lawrence, Columbia University, City College of New York, and Syracuse University, and was a founder of the Teachers & Writers Collaborative. She received numerous awards and honors, including a Guggenheim Fellowship, the Edith Wharton Award, the Jewish Cultural Achievement Award for Literary Arts, the Rea Award for the Short Story, and the Vermont Award for Excellence in the Arts. In 1989, Governor Mario Cuomo declared her the first official New York State Writer. Her poetry collection Fidelity was published posthumously in 2008, and A Grace Paley Reader: Stories, Essays, and Poetry was published in 2017.

Karen Pittman won a Theatre World Award for her performance in Disgraced on Broadway, and recently starred in Pipeline at The Mitzi Newhouse Theatre at Lincoln Center, for which she was nominated for a Lucille Lortel Award for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Play and a Drama League Award for Distinguished Performance. Additional Broadway credits include Passing Strange and Good People, and off-Broadway credits include King Liz and Domesticated. Her film and television credits include Apple TV’s landmark series The Morning Show, Paramount TV’s Yellowstone, and Marvel’s Luke Cage, as well as The Americans, Living with Yourself, and Evil. Her films include Custody, Begin Again, The Bourne Legacy, Detroit, and Benji the Dove. She has a Bachelor of Science in Voice and Opera from Northwestern University and an MFA from New York University Graduate Acting.

Jerome Weidman (1913 - 1998) was a playwright and novelist. He authored five plays and more than twenty novels, including I Can Get It for You Wholesale and Before You Go. Weidman won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama for his work on the musical Fiorello!, one of only nine musicals to win the award. He also wrote three essay collections, two short story collections, including My Father Sits in the Dark, and an autobiography.