Ben Loory’s first collection, Stories for Nighttime and Some for the Day, was a selection of the Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers Program. His second collection, Tales of Falling and Flying, was named a Favorite Book of the Year by the staff of The Paris Review and one of the 50 Best Fantasy Books of All Time by Esquire magazine. Loory’s fables and tales have appeared in The New Yorker, BOMB Magazine, Fairy Tale Review, and Electric Literature, and been heard on This American Life and at WORDTheatre. He lives and teaches short story writing in Los Angeles.
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. Her latest work, Python’s Kiss, a collection of short stories, will be published this March.
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, American Horror Story, The Price of Money : A Largo Winch Adventure, and Evil. 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. Onstage, O’Hare appeared in the posthumous musical by Stephen Sondheim, Here We Are. Upcoming projects include The Boroughs on Netflix and the Robert Zemeckis thriller The Last Mrs. Parrish.
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, Dark Harvest, and The Uninvited.
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, The Position, and The Wife, among other novels. A musical of The Interestings is in development. Wolitzer was the guest editor of The Best American Short Stories 2017, and also writes books for young readers. She is a faculty member in the Creative Writing Program at Stony Brook University, where she co-founded and co-directs BookEnds, a yearlong intensive for emerging novelists.
CREDITS
“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.
