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Selected Shorts
Guest host David Sedaris presents three stories about recollection and redemption. In “Sibyl,” by Carys Davies, read by Jane Kaczmarek, two lonely vacationers are brought together. Andre Braugher performs an excerpt from Toni Morrison’s master work, Beloved. And a daughter returns home to help her aging father in an excerpt from Rachel Khong’s bittersweet novel Goodbye, Vitamin, performed by Jennifer Ikeda.
Andre Braugher is a two-time Emmy Award winner for his breakout role in Homicide: Life on the Street and for the television mini-series Thief. He received five consecutive Emmy Awards for Brooklyn Nine-Nine. His film and television credits include Glory, City of Angels, Gideon’s Crossing, Hack, Salem’s Lot, The Mist, The Andromeda Strain, Men of a Certain Age, Law & Order: Special Victims Unit, New Girl, BoJack Horseman, and Live in Front of a Studio Audience as James Evans on Good Times. Braugher’s stage credits include the Public Theater’s productions of Coriolanus, Twelfth Night, Measure for Measure, Richard II, and Hamlet, and has won Obie Awards for his leading roles in the Public’s Henry V and The Whipping Man at Manhattan Theatre Club. Braugher can be seen in the forthcoming film She Said and will star in The Roundabout Theatre Company’s production of Birthday Candles starting in March.
Carys Davies’s debut novel, West, was shortlisted for the Rathbones Folio Prize, runner-up for the Society of Authors’ McKitterick Prize, and winner of the Wales Book of the Year for Fiction. She is also the author of two collections of short stories, Some New Ambush and The Redemption of Galen Pike, which won the Frank O’Connor International Short Story Award and the Jerwood Fiction Uncovered Prize. Additional awards include the Royal Society of Literature’s V.S. Pritchett Prize, the Society of Authors’ Olive Cook Short Story Award, a Northern Writers’ Award, and a Cullman Fellowship at the New York Public Library. The Mission House is her most recent novel.
Jennifer Ikeda’s stage appearances, both on and off-Broadway, include Titus Andronicus, Macbeth, As You Like It with the Public Theater, Vietgone, Top Girls, Linda with MTC, and most recently, King Philip’s Head… with Clubbed Thumb. She has also been featured in the television shows Blue Bloods, New Amsterdam, Maniac, Tell Me a Story, Dash & Lily, and the films Advantageous, Swing, among others. Ikeda has narrated dozens of audiobooks and has been honored with two Audie Awards. Upcoming projects include the short film Ode to Psyche.
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.
Rachel Khong’s debut novel, Goodbye, Vitamin, was honored with the California Book Award for First Fiction and named a Best Book of the Year by NPR, O magazine, Vogue, Esquire, Huffington Post, Nylon, and Booklist, among other publications. Her writing has appeared in The Paris Review, American Short Fiction, and The San Francisco Chronicle. She previously served as Executive Editor of Lucky Peach.
Toni Morrison (1931-2019) is the author of eleven novels, from The Bluest Eye (1970) to God Help the Child (2015). She received the National Book Critics Circle Award, the Pulitzer Prize, and in 1993 she was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature.
David Sedaris is the author of eleven books, including, most recently, A Carnival of Snackery, The Best of Me, Calypso, and Theft by Finding. He is a regular contributor to The New Yorker and BBC Radio 4. In 2019, he was inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Letters. Sedaris is the recipient of the Thurber Prize for American Humor, Jonathan Swift International Literature Prize for Satire and Humor, and the Terry Southern Prize for Humor.
CREDITS
“Sibyl” by Carys Davies, from The Redemption of Galen Pike (Salt Publishing, 2014). Copyright © 2014 by Carys Davies. Used by permission of The Clegg Agency.
The works of Toni Morrison are under copyright, and they are featured here with the permission of ICM Partners and the Estate of Chloe A. Morrison. Excerpt from Beloved. © 1987 by Toni Morrison.
Goodbye, Vitamin by Rachel Khong (Henry Holt and Co., 2017). Copyright © 2017 by Rachel Khong. Used by permission of Janklow & Nesbit Associates.
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