Kendra Fortmeyer is the author of the Young Adult novel Hole in the Middle. She received a 2017 Pushcart Prize for her story “Things I Know to Be True,” which was originally published in One Story and reprinted in The Best American Nonrequired Reading. She’s a recipient of grants from the Elizabeth George Foundation, Michener Center for Writers, Arvon Foundation and others, and a graduate of the 2016 Clarion Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers workshop with an MFA from the New Writers Project at the University of Texas at Austin. Her short fiction has appeared in The Toast, Lightspeed, Apex, and elsewhere.
Jane Kaczmarek is best known for her role as Lois on Malcolm in the Middle, for which she received 7 consecutive Emmy nominations as well as nominations for the Golden Globe and SAG Awards. A graduate of the University of Wisconsin and Yale School of Drama, Kaczmarek made her television debut on The Paper Chase and Hill Street Blues. On stage, she has appeared on Broadway and off, and for 6 seasons at the Williamstown Theatre Festival. Her recent theater credits include Long Day's Journey Into Night with Alfred Molina and Our Town with Deaf West Theatre. Kaczmarek’s favorite job is raising her three kids and reading/hosting Selected Shorts across America.
Ben Loory is the author of the collections Tales of Falling and Flying and Stories for Nighttime and Some for the Day, both from Penguin Books. His fables and tales have appeared in TheNew Yorker, BOMB Magazine, Fairy Tale Review, and A Public Space; been anthologized in The New Voices of Fantasy and Year’s Best Weird Fiction; and been heard on This American Life. He is also the author of a picture book for children, The Baseball Player and the Walrus. Loory lives and teaches short story writing in Los Angeles.
Calvin Leon Smith can currently be seen in the Broadway revival of Cabaret. He co-starred in the Pulitzer Prize–winning play Fat Ham on Broadway, following an acclaimed run at the Public Theater. His television credits include Barry Jenkins’ award-winning Amazon series The Underground Railroad, HBO’s The Deuce, and the acclaimed anthology series High Maintenance. Smith’s additional theater credits include The Animal Kingdom at the Connolly Theatre, Open Throat at Little Island, Lynn Nottage’s Pulitzer Prize–winning play Sweat with the Public Theater’s Mobile Unit, The Miser with Moliere in the Park, On the Grounds of Belonging at Long Wharf Theatre, several plays with the Actors Theatre of Louisville, the Clarence Brown Theatre, and Macbeth at Shakespeare on the Sound. On film, Smith has appeared in Benny & James, which premiered at the Cannes Film Festival, Better Man, winning Best Actor at the Queens World Film Festival, Paper Friends, and RSVP. Smith is a graduate of The Juilliard School.
Meg Wolitzer is the New York Times bestselling author of The Female Persuasion, The Interestings, The Ten-Year Nap, The Position, and The Wife. She is a faculty member in the Creative Writing and Literature Program at The Lichtenstein Center at Stony Brook University, where she co-founded and co-directs BookEnds, a one-year, non-credit intensive for emerging novelists. Wolitzer, who was the guest editor of The Best American Short Stories 2017, is the radio and podcast host of Symphony Space’s Selected Shorts.
CREDITS
"The Book," by Ben Loory, from Stories for Nighttime and Some for the Day (Penguin Books, 2011). Copyright © 2011 by Ben Loory. Used with permission of Funke Literary, LLC.
“Things I Know to Be True,” by Kendra Fortmeyer, from One Story (Issue 209, August 13, 2015). Copyright (c) 2015 by Kendra Fortmeyer. Used by permission of the author.
