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 and most recently can be seen on The Big Bang Theory, This Is Us, Carol's Second Act, and Mixed-ish. In New York, Kaczmarek has appeared on Broadway and off at the Manhattan Theatre Club, Second Stage, the Public Theatre, New York Theater Workshop, and 6 seasons at the Williamstown Theatre Festival. Her recent theater credits include in Long Day's Journey Into Night, Our Town with Deaf West Theatre, and The Year to Come at La Jolla Playhouse. Kaczmarek’s favorite job is raising her three kids and reading/hosting Selected Shorts across America.
Chinasa Ogbuagu has been seen in works at New York Theater Workshop, Playwrights Horizons, Clubbed Thumb, Playwrights Realm, Lincoln Center, and recently in the Roundabout Theatre Co revival of All My Sons on Broadway. She received a Lortel nomination for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Play for her performance in Sojourners. Her television credits include Homeland, Bull, The Good Fight, and The Following. She can currently be seen playing Beth Hanlon in the HBO series Mare of Easttown.
Born and raised in Port Harcourt, Nigeria, Chinelo Okparanta received an MFA from the Iowa Writers' Workshop. A Colgate University Olive B. O'Connor Fellow in Fiction as well as a recipient of the University of Iowa's Provost's Postgraduate Fellowship in Fiction, Okparanta was nominated for a U.S. Artists Fellowship in 2012. She is a winner of a 2014 & 16 Lambda Literary Award, the 2016 Jessie Redmon Fauset Book Award in Fiction, the 2016 Inaugural Betty Berzon Emerging Writer Award from the Publishing Triangle, and a 2014 O. Henry Prize. Her debut short story collection, Happiness, Like Water, was cited as an editors’ choice in The New York Times Book Review and was named on the list of The Guardian’s Best African Fiction of 2013. She has published work in The New Yorker, Granta, Tin House, TheKenyon Review, AGNI, among others. In 2017, Okparanta was named one of Granta's Best of Young American Novelists. Her first novel, Under the Udala Trees, was published in 2015.
Rachel Simon is a public speaker on diversity and disability and the author of numerous titles, including The Story of Beautiful Girl and Riding the Bus with My Sister, which was adapted for film starring Rosie O' Donnell and Andie McDowell, directed by Anjelica Huston. She has been honored with The Secretary Tommy G. Thompson Recognition Award for Contributions to the Field of Disability from the U.S. Dept. of Health and Human Services, and has received writing fellowships from the Delaware Division of the Arts, the Pennsylvania Council of the Arts, and the Ludwig Vogelstein Foundation. Simon was selected twice for the Barnes & Noble Discover New Writers Award.
Maria Tucci has appeared on Broadway in Mary Stuart, Night of the Iguana, The Rose Tattoo, The Milk Train Doesn’t Stop Here Anymore, The Little Foxes, The Great White Hope, and many others. She translated Filumena and Christmas in Naples by Eduardo De Filippo for the Williamstown Theatre Festival, and a collection of her translations was published in 2001. Ms. Tucci’s film and television credits include American Playhouse, Sweet Nothing, To Die For, Third Watch, Law & Order, and The Slap.
CREDITS
"Fairness" by Chinelo Okparanta, first published in Subtropics (Spring 2012). Copyright © 2012 by Chinelo Okparanta. Used by permission of The Wylie Agency, LLC.
"Little Nightmares, Little Dreams" by Rachel Simon. From Little Nightmares, Little Dreams (Houghton Mifflin, 1990). Copyright © 1990 by Rachel Simon. Used by permission of Janklow & Nesbit Associates.
