On The Trail

ACTORS & ARTISTS

Samantha Bee is the host of the Emmy Award-winning Full Frontal with Samantha Bee, the first late-night satire show hosted by a woman. Previously, she was the longest-serving correspondent on The Daily Show, and she served as co-creator and executive producer of The Detour. She is the author of the essay collection I Know I Am, But What Are You? and has been featured in TIME 100: The Most Influential People. Most recently, Bee and Full Frontal launched the successful #MailedIt campaign to help save the United States Postal Service and also launched a podcast titled Full Release.

Shirley Chisholm (1924 - 2005) was the first black woman elected to Congress, serving from 1969 to 1983. She was also the first black female candidate to run for the Democratic Party’s presidential nomination. She was a founding member of both the Congressional Black Caucus and the Congressional Women’s Caucus. She is the subject of the Peabody Award-winning documentary Chisholm ‘72: Unbought and Unbossed, and she authored two autobiographies, Unbought and Unbossed and The Good Fight. In 2015, Chisholm was posthumously awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

Crystal Dickinson won the Theatre World Award for her Broadway debut in the 2012 production of Clybourne Park. She subsequently appeared in You Can’t Take It With You on Broadway in 2014, A Raisin in the Sun at the Two River Theater, and The Low Road at the Public Theater. Her film and television credits include House of Payne, I Origins, This Is Where I Leave You, The Good Wife, Feed the Beast, Collateral Beauty, New Amsterdam, and The Chi. Dickinson has taught at Stella Adler Studio, Spelman College, Pace University, Princeton University, the Juilliard School, NYU, and both of her alma maters, University of Illinois and Seton Hall. Currently, Dickinson is working on Lessons in Survival, an online theatrical event where 40 theater artists come together to reinvestigate the words of trailblazing artists and activists who survived and created in times of revolution in our country.

Paul Giamatti has been honored with two Golden Globe Awards, three Screen Actors Guild Awards, and an Emmy for his work in film and television. His screen credits include American Splendor, Sideways, Cinderella Man, for which he was nominated for an Academy Award, the title role in the HBO miniseries John Adams, Barney’s Version, Win Win, 12 Years a Slave, Love & Mercy, Inside Amy Schumer, Straight Outta Compton, BoJack Horseman, At Home with Amy Sedaris, and Lodge 49. Giamatti currently stars in Showtime’s Billions, which recently premiered its fifth season. He will appear in the forthcoming films Gunpowder Milkshake, A Mouthful of Air, and Jungle Cruise.

Molly Ivins (1944 - 2007) was a newspaper columnist, author, political commentator, and humorist who began her career in journalism in the complaint department of the Houston Chronicle. In 1976, Ivins joined The New York Times as a political reporter. Her column was syndicated in more than three hundred newspapers, and she was a regular contributor to Esquire, The Atlantic Monthly, The New York Times Magazine, The Nation, and Harper’s, among other publications. Her first book, Molly Ivins Can’t Say That, Can She?, spent more than a year on the New York Times bestseller list, and her books with Lou Dubose on George W. Bush — Shrub, Bushwhacked, and Who Let the Dogs In? — were national bestsellers. A three-time Pulitzer Prize finalist, Ivins claimed that her two greatest honors were that the Minneapolis police force named its mascot pig after her and that she was once banned from the campus of Texas A&M. She is the subject of the 2019 documentary Raise Hell: The Life & Times of Molly Ivins.

Jordan Klepper is perhaps best known for his work as a correspondent on The Daily Show, his comedy series The Opposition with Jordan Klepper, and his docuseries Klepper. He is an alumnus of the improv troupes The Second City and Upright Citizens Brigade. He and his wife, Laura Grey, are co-creators of short films including TMI, a featured short at the Slamdance Film Festival, and Peepers, which premiered at South By Southwest.

Aasif Mandvi is an actor, writer, and comedian who stars on the hit CBS series Evil. He was a correspondent on Comedy Central's The Daily Show with Jon Stewart and starred on HBO's The Brink, for which he also served as a writer and producer. He won an OBIE Award for his critically acclaimed play Sakina’s Restaurant, which was adapted into the film Today's Special. His numerous theater credits include The Pulitzer Prize-winning Disgraced at Lincoln Center. Additional film and television credits include Jericho; Margin Call; Gods Behaving Badly; Million Dollar Arm; The Brink; Younger; Shut Eye; A Series of Unfortunate Events; Blue Bloods; Human Capital; This Way Up; Room 104; Mira, Royal Detective; and Halal in the Family.

Alexandra Petri is an American humorist and newspaper columnist at TheWashington Post. She is the author of Nothing Is Wrong and Here is Why and A Field Guide to Awkward Silences. Her writing has also appeared in McSweeney's, Daily Science Fiction, TheNew Yorker's “Shouts and Murmurs,” among others. She's a Helen Hayes Award-nominated playwright, member of the BMI Advanced Lehman Engel Musical Theatre Workshop, as well as an O. Henry Pun-Off champion. Petri lives in Washington, DC.

Hunter S. Thompson (1937 - 2005) was a journalist, credited as the creator of the gonzo journalism movement. He contributed to numerous national and international publications, including The National Observer, The New York Times, Time, Vanity Fair, Esquire, and most prolifically for Rolling Stone. His best known book, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, is regarded as a classic examination of the counterculture movement of the 1960s and has twice been adapted to film. Thompson’s other works include Hell’s Angels, Fear and Loathing: On the Campaign Trail ’72, The Gonzo Papers, The Rum Diary, Screw-Jack, and most recently the posthumous collection Fear and Loathing at Rolling Stone.

Samuel Langhorne Clemens, better known by his pen name Mark Twain (1835 - 1910), published more than 30 books, hundreds of short stories and essays, and gave lecture tours around the world. His books include The Innocents Abroad, Roughing It, The Mysterious Stranger, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, and Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. Renowned for his wit and satire, Twain has been lauded as the first great American humorist.

Roy Wood Jr. is a stand-up comedian, producer and actor, and is currently a correspondent on Comedy Central's Emmy and NAACP award-winning The Daily Show with Trevor Noah. Roy's second special, No One Loves You, premiered as part of Comedy Central’s Stand-Up Month in January 2019, the network’s highest rated original stand-up premiere since his February 2017 one-hour, Father Figure. He recently expanded his already large role on Comedy Central with a comprehensive first-look deal and is developing his comedy pilot Jefferson County: Probation. In addition, Wood has created two Comedy Central web series, Stand-Up Playback and The Night Pigeon. His additional credits include Space Force, Better Call Saul, TheLast O.G., This Is Not Happening, Last Comic Standing, and Def Comedy Jam, among others.