Punching In

Teagle F. Bougere recently portrayed James Baldwin in The American Vicarious production of Debate: Baldwin vs. Buckley, in New York City and London. He co-starred with Catherine Zeta-Jones in the television series Queen America. Bougere's Broadway credits include The Crucible, A Raisin in the Sun, and The Tempest. He was featured in The Public Theater’s productions of Socrates and the much acclaimed production of Coriolanus in Central Park. His most recent New York stage appearance was the world premiere of The New Englanders at Manhattan Theater Club. Additional theater credits include Is God Is at SoHo Rep, Beast in the Jungle, the title role in the stage adaptation of Ralph Ellison’s novel Invisible Man at The Court Theater in Chicago, The Studio Theatre in Washington, D.C., and The Huntington in Boston, Julius Caesar and Cymbeline for The Public Theater in Central Park, A Soldier’s Play at Second Stage, A Fair Country at Lincoln Center, Last Dance for Sybil (with Ruby Dee) at the New Federal Theatre, An Iliad (one-man show) at the Pittsburgh Public Theater, and Joe Turner’s Come and Gone and Blue Door at Berkeley Rep. His film and television credits include Hill ’n’ Gully, The Path, The Mist, Good Friday, Conviction, Cosby, The Job, Third Watch, Murder in Black and White, A Night at the Museum, The Imposters, The Pelican Brief, Two Weeks Notice, What the Deaf Man Heard, and Bull, as well as seven episodes for the Law & Order franchise.

John Cheever (1912 - 1982) was the author of four novels, a novella, and more than 100 short stories, many of which were published in The New Yorker. His first novel, The Wapshot Chronicle, won the 1958 National Book Award, and The Stories of John Cheever was awarded both the National Book Critics Circle Award and the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. Cheever was the recipient of a Guggenheim fellowship, the Edward MacDowell Medal, and the National Medal for Literature by the American Academy of Arts and Letters, among numerous honors.

Lydia Davis is the author of The End of the Story: A Novel and several story collections. Her collection Varieties of Disturbance: Stories was a finalist for the 2007 National Book Award. She is the recipient of a MacArthur fellowship, the American Academy of Arts and Letters’ Award of Merit Medal, and was named a Chevalier of the Order of the Arts and Letters by the French government for her fiction and her translations of modern writers, including Maurice Blanchot, Michel Leiris, and Marcel Proust. Lydia Davis is the winner of the 2013 Man Booker International Prize and the 2020 PEN/Malamud Award. Her latest story collection Our Strangers will be released in October 2023.

Bernice L. McFadden is the author of several critically acclaimed novels including Sugar, Loving Donovan, Nowhere Is a Place, The Warmest December, Gathering of Waters, which was a New York Times Editors’ Choice selection and named to 100 Notable Books of 2012, Glorious, and The Book of Harlan, which won a 2017 American Book Award and the NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Literary Work of Fiction. She is a four-time Hurston/Wright Legacy Award finalist, as well as the recipient of four awards from the BCALA. Praise Song for the Butterflies is her latest novel. She has written five novels under the pseudonym Geneva Holliday.

Maulik Pancholy is an actor, author, and activist. He is best known for his television roles on 30 Rock, Weeds, Whitney, The Good Fight, Only Murders in the Building, and for lending his voice to the long-running animated series Phineas & Ferb and Sanjay & Craig. He starred on Broadway in Bess Wohl's Grand Horizons and in Terrence McNally’s It's Only a Play, and recently in 2nd Stage's Off-Broadway production of To My Girls. Pancholy’s debut novel, The Best at It, was named a 2020 Stonewall Honor Book and is being developed for television at HBOMax. His second novel, Nikhil Out Loud, was released in October 2022. Pancholy is the co-founder of the anti-bullying organization ActToChange.org.

Mary Kay Place is an Emmy Award–winning actress whose many television appearances include the memorable role of Loretta Haggers on Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman; Adalene Grant on Big Love; The New Normal; Bored to Death; My So-Called Life; The West Wing; Pushing Daisies, Getting On, Grey’s Anatomy, Shameless, The Romanoffs, The Imposters, Saturday Night Live, and Grace and Frankie. Her film credits include Being John Malkovich, The Big Chill, It's Complicated, Julie & Julia, Citizen Ruth, The Rainmaker, Sweet Home Alabama, and more recently, The Prom, Sia’s Music, and Diane.

David Rakoff (1964 – 2012) is the author of four New York Times bestsellers: the essay collections Fraud, Don’t Get Too Comfortable, and Half Empty, and the novel in verse Love, Dishonor, Marry, Die, Cherish, Perish. A two-time recipient of the Lambda Literary Award and winner of the Thurber Prize for American Humor, he was a regular contributor to Public Radio International’s This American Life. His writing frequently appeared in The New York Times, Newsweek, Wired, Salon, GQ, Outside, Gourmet, Vogue, and Slate, among other publications. An accomplished stage and screen actor, playwright, and screenwriter, Rakoff adapted the screenplay for and starred in Joachim Back’s film The New Tenants, which won the 2010 Academy Award for Best Live Action Short.

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

“Bayonne” by John Cheever. Copyright © 1994 by Academy Chicago Publishers. Collected in Thirteen Uncollected Stories. Used by permission of The Wylie Agency, LLC.

“Alvin the Typesetter” by Lydia Davis, first appeared in the anthology Here Lies (Tripp Street Press, 2001) Copyright ©2001 by Lydia Davis. Collected in Sam Johnson is Indignant (McSweeney’s, 2001. Used by permission of the Denise Shannon Literary Agency.

“OBF, Inc.” by Bernice L. McFadden, from Cutting Edge: New Stories of Mystery and Crime by Women Writers (Akashic Books, 2019). Copyright © 2019 by Bernice L. McFadden. Used by permission of the author.