Personal Politics

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.

Juliana Canfield is an actress recognized for her work in Succession, The Assistant, Amazing Stories, and Sofia Coppola's On the Rocks. Her New York stage credits include the world premiere of Adrienne Kennedy’s He Brought Her Heart Back in a Box, Marcus Gardley’s The House That Will Not Stand, Maria Irene Fornes’ Fefu and Her Friends, and Amelia Roper's Zurich. She will next be seen in the upcoming F/X series, Y: The Last Man opposite Diane Lane.

Alfred Döblin (1878–1957) was born in German Stettin (now the Polish city of Szczecin) to Jewish parents. He studied medicine at Friedrich Wilhelm University, specializing in neurology and psychiatry. He is the author of the novels The Three Leaps of Wang Lun, Wallenstein, and Berlin Alexanderplatz. He fled Germany with his family soon after Hitler’s rise, moving first to Zurich, then to Paris, and, after the Nazi invasion of France, to Los Angeles, where he converted to Catholicism and briefly worked as a screenwriter for Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. After the war he returned to Germany and worked as an editor with the aim of rehabilitating literature that had been banned under Hitler, but he found himself at odds with conservative postwar cultural trends.

Peter Orner is the author of several works of fiction, including The Second Coming of Mavala Shikongo, Love and Shame and Love, Esther Stories, Last Car Over the Sagamore Bridge, and most recently, Maggie Brown & Others as well as the memoir Am I Alone Here?, which was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award. He is a two-time Pushcart Prize winner and a recipient of the Guggenheim fellowship.

Kiley Reid is a recent graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, where she was the recipient of the Truman Capote Fellowship. Her work has been featured in Ploughshares, New South, Playboy, and The Tishman Review, among other publications. Reid’s first novel, Such a Fun Age, was published in 2019.

Liev Schreiber is a Selected Shorts alum, best known for Showtimes’ Ray Donovan, for which he earned five Golden Globe nominations and three Emmy nominations. His film credits include the Scream trilogy, X-Men Origins: Wolverine, The Manchurian Candidate, Spotlight, Isle of Dogs, and Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse. He has appeared on Broadway in Glengarry Glen Ross, for which he won a Tony Award, A View from the Bridge, for which he won a Drama Desk Award, Talk Radio, and Les Liaisons Dangereuses. He received an Obie for his performance In the Public Theater’s production of Cymbeline, as well as playing the title roles in their productions of Hamlet, Henry V, and Macbeth. Schreiber is a graduate of the Yale School of Drama. Upcoming projects include The French Dispatch and Across the River and Into the Trees.

Baron Vaughn is a writer, producer, director, actor, and comedian, who currently appears on Netflix's Grace & Frankie and the host of SYFY's The Great Debate. Additional television credits include Fairly Legal, Comedy Bang! Bang!, Girls, Right Now Kapow, BoJack Horseman, Superstore, Corporate, Those Who Can’t, Black-ish, Wild Life, and as the voice of Tom Servo on Mystery Science Theater 3000. He is also the creator of the documentary Fatherless. As a stand-up comedian, Vaughn tours widely and has been featured on Comedy Central’s The Half Hour. He has two comedy recordings, Raised by Cable and Blaxistential Crisis, and is the co-creator and co-host of Comedy Central’s The New Negroes. Upcoming projects include The Time Capsule and Scroll Wheel of Time.

​​“Parent Night at Confidence Academy” by Kiley Reid, from December Magazine (2016). Copyright © 2016 by Kiley Reid. Used by permission of William Morris Endeavor Entertainment, LLC.

“A Little Fable” by Alfred Döblin, from Bright Magic (Published in English by New York Review Books, 2016). Original text copyright © by S. Fischer Verlag GmbH (Frankfurt am Main). English translation used by permission of New York Review Books and translator Damion Searls. All rights reserved.

“Shouting Wenkie” by Peter Orner, from McSweeney’s Quarterly (2019). Copyright © 2019 by Peter Orner. Used by permission of Trident Media Group.