Yetide Badaki is a Nigerian-born actress known for the Starz fantasy drama American Gods, as well as appearances on Lost, Touch,Criminal Minds, Masters of Sex, and This Is Us. As a theater actress in Chicago, Badaki won acclaim for her performances at the Victory Gardens Theater and Steppenwolf. She won Best Actress for her role in the film Precipice at the Indie Short Fest. Badaki can currently be seen in Star Trek: Strange New Worlds. Her film credits include RISE, Cardinal X, A Chance of Rain, What We Found, and Run Fast.
In a career spanning more than seventy years, Ray Bradbury (1920 - 2012) inspired generations of readers to dream, think, and create. A prolific author of hundreds of short stories and close to fifty books, as well as numerous poems, essays, operas, plays, teleplays, and screenplays, Bradbury was one of the most celebrated writers of our time. His groundbreaking works include Fahrenheit 451, The Martian Chronicles, The Illustrated Man, Dandelion Wine, and Something Wicked This Way Comes. He wrote the screenplay for John Huston's classic film adaptation of Moby Dick and was nominated for an Academy Award. He adapted sixty-five of his stories for television's The Ray Bradbury Theater and won an Emmy for his teleplay of The Halloween Tree. Bradbury was the recipient of the 2000 National Book Foundation Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters, the 2004 National Medal of Arts, and the 2007 Pulitzer Prize Special Citation, among many honors.
Neil Gaiman is the New York Times bestselling and award-winning author and creator of books, graphic novels, short stories, film, and television for all ages, including Norse Mythology, Neverwhere, Coraline, The Graveyard Book, The Ocean at the End of the Lane, and The View from the Cheap Seats. His fiction has received Newbery, Carnegie, Hugo, Nebula, World Fantasy, and Will Eisner Awards. American Gods, based on the 2001 novel, is now a critically acclaimed, Emmy-nominated TV series, and he was the writer and showrunner for the mini-series adaptation of Good Omens, season 1 &2, based on the book he co-authored with Sir Terry Pratchett. Gaiman was an Executive Producer and co-showrunner for Netflix’s TV adaptation of his Sandman comic book series. He is currently developing a TV adaptation of Anansi Boys. In 2017 Gaiman became a Global Goodwill Ambassador for UNHCR, the UN Refugee Agency. Originally from England, he now divides his time between Scotland, where Good Omens and Anansi Boys are filmed, and the United States, where he is a Professor in the Arts at Bard College. He is a fellow of The Royal Society of Literature.
Javier Muñoz is known for his performances on Broadway in the roles of Alexander Hamilton in Hamilton and Usnavi in In The Heights. Recent theater credits include The Devil Wears Prada at the Nederlander Theater in Chicago, The New Englanders at Manhattan Theater Club, and Stephen Lloyd Helper’s A Sign of the Times. On screen, he has been seen in Monuments, Shadowhunters, Three Months, Love … Reconsidered, and he is the voice of Ohm on the Disney Jr. animated series Eureka! Javier is also an outspoken activist for LGBTQ+ rights, a Global Ambassador for (RED), which fights to end HIV/AIDS, and supporter of GMHC. He was honored with OUT 100’s Breakout of the Year Award in 2016, as well as the Howard Ashman Award by GMHC.
Kirsten Vangsness is coming to you fresh off a run of Justin Elizabeth Sayres’ Lottie Pratchett Took a Hatchet at the Los Angeles LGBTQ center, and she was most recently seen playing the 45th President of the United States in the Phinny Kiyomura masterpiece Nimrod at Theatre of NOTE. At the top of 2023 she wrapped the 16th season of Criminal Minds on Paramount+, playing Penelope Garcia, and will be super elated when they get to start a season 17. Vangsness took two plays to the 2019 Edinburgh Fringe: Mess and the feminist time-travel musical Cleo, Theo, & Wu. She is the star of the film noir spoof Kill Me, Deadly and the animated film-festival darling Curtains. She is the recipient of the HRC LGBTQ Visibility Award, the Open Fist Excellence Award, and the L.A. Drama Critics Award for Best Actress. Learn about her goings on at kirstenvangsness.com.
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
Read with permission of Ray Bradbury Literary Works LLC and Don Congdon Associates, Inc. THERE WILL COME SOFT RAINS (c) 1950 by the Crowell Collier Publishing Company, renewed 1977 by Ray Bradbury. THE FOG HORN was originally published as THE BEAST FROM 20,000 FATHOMS in the Saturday Evening Post (c) 1951 by the Curtis Publishing Company, renewed 1979 by Ray Bradbury. EMBROIDERY (C) 1951 by Stadium Publishing, renewed 1979 by Ray Bradbury. HOMECOMING (C) 1946, renewed 1974 by Ray Bradbury. January 7, 1962 letter to Robert Gottlieb from REMEMBRANCE: THE SELECTED CORRESPONDENCE OF RAY BRADBURY (c) 2023 by Ray Bradbury Literary Works LLC.
