Louise Erdrich is the author of a memoir, three books of poetry, and more than a dozen works of fiction, including the short story collection The Red Convertible and the award-winning novels Love Medicine, The Plague of Doves, The Round House, which won the National Book Award in 2012, LaRose, Future Home of the Living God, The Night Watchman, which was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 2021, and the The Sentence, which was published in 2021.
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.
Denis O’Hare is known for his versatility and multiple roles on the series American Horror Story. His screen credits include Garden State, A Mighty Heart, Michael Clayton, Milk, The Comedians, Duplicity, The Good Wife, True Blood, The Normal Heart, Dallas Buyers Club, This Is Us, Big Little Lies, Lizzie, The Goldfinch, American Gods, Dr. Seuss' the Grinch Musical, The Postcard Killings, The Nevers, The Accidental Wolf, Infinite Storm, The Nevers, and American Horror Story. He won a Tony Award for his performance in Take Me Out and a Drama Desk Award for his role in Sweet Charity. He is the co-writer and star of An Iliad, and co-author of The Good Book. O’Hare recently finished up a run in the posthumous musical by Stephen Sondheim, Here We Are.
Elizabeth Reaser’s film and television credits include Sweet Land, Grey’s Anatomy, The Twilight Saga, The Ex List, The Good Wife, Bonnie & Clyde, Mad Men, Manhunt: Unabomber, Law & Order True Crime, The Haunting of Hill House, Easy, The Handmaid’s Tale, 50 Stages of Fright, Embattled, American Crime Story, and Dark Harvest.
Delmore Schwartz (1913 – 1966) was born and raised in Brooklyn, New York. A brilliant poet, short-story writer, and literary talent, he contributed “In Dreams Begin Responsibilities” to the first issue of Partisan Review. His books include Shenandoah and Other Verse Plays; the works of poetry Genesis: Book One and Summer Knowledge; and the short-fiction collections The World Is a Wedding and Successful Love and Other Stories. Schwartz taught at Syracuse, Princeton, and Kenyon College, and received the Bollingen Prize in 1959.
Meg Wolitzer is the New York Times bestselling author of The Female Persuasion, The Interestings, The Ten-Year Nap, and The Wife, among other books. She was the guest editor of The Best American Short Stories 2017, and 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
“Reality” by Diana Spechler, winner of the 2021 Stella Kupferberg Memorial Short Story Prize. Copyright © 2021 by Diana Spechler. Used by permission of the author.
“The Leap” by Louise Erdrich, from The Red Convertible: Selected and New Stories, 1978-2008 (Harper Collins, 2010). Copyright © 2010 by Louise Erdrich. Used by permission of The Wylie Agency, LLC.
"Death and the Lady," by Ben Loory, from Tales of Falling and Flying (Penguin, 2017). Copyright © 2017 by Ben Loory. Used by permission of the author.
"In Dreams Begin Responsibilities," by Delmore Schwartz. Copyright © 1978 by New Directions Publishing Corporation. Used by permission of New Directions Publishing.
