Sizzling Summer Travels

Umberto Eco (1932–2016) was an internationally acclaimed Italian author best known for his novels The Name of the Rose, Foucault’s Pendulum, The Island of the Day Before, The Prague Cemetery, and Numero Zero. Eco also published numerous nonfiction essay collections and works of literary criticism, and taught at institutions including the University of Turin, Columbia University, Harvard University, and the University of Bologna, where he served as professor emeritus.

Jin Ha’s stage credits include Here We Are, Hamilton: An American Musical, and M. Butterfly. He can be seen onscreen in Sugar, Poker Face, Only Murders in the Building, Pachinko, DEVS, Love Life, and Jesus Christ Superstar: Live in Concert. Ha is an alumnus of the NYU Graduate Acting program.

Stana Katic has starred in two major TV series: Absentia, produced by Sony Pictures Television and available on Amazon Prime, and for 8 seasons on ABC’s Castle. Her additional screen credits include CBGB, Big Sur, The Spirit, Feast of Love, The Double, Quantum of Solace, The Rendezvous, Lost in Florence, A Call to Spy, The Possession of Hannah Grace, and Murder in a Small Town. She made her off-Broadway debut in 2016 in White Rabbit Red Rabbit. Katic voices the role of Wonder Woman in the forthcoming animated adventure series Justice Society.

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.

Campbell Scott is known for his film and television roles in Singles, Big Night, which he co-directed and co-produced alongside Stanley Tucci, Roger Dodger, for which he won the National Board of Review Award for Best Actor, Royal Pains, House of Cards, The Amazing Spider-Man, Soundtrack, Billions, Jurassic World: Dominion, and WeCrashed. Scott has narrated series including The Food That Built America, Colosseum, Nature, and The Machines That Built America, and the 2017 music album Blueprint. On Broadway, Scott’s stage credits include the Tony Award-nominated revival of Noises Off and the 2019 production of A Christmas Carol, and regional productions of Uncle Vanya, Our Town, and The Atheist. His most recent film, Millers in Marriage, premiered at the 2024 Toronto International Film Festival, and was released in the US in February.

Elizabeth Spencer (1921–2019) was the author of nine novels, eight collections of short stories, a memoir, and a play. She was a five-time recipient of the O. Henry Award and a two-time National Book Award finalist, and the winner of the PEN/Malamud Award for Short Fiction. Spencer was elected into the American Academy of Arts and Letters in 1985, and in 2009 received the Lifetime Achievement Award of the Mississippi Institute of Arts and Letters.

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, The Slap, and American Horror Story.

Edith Wharton (1862–1937) wrote stories, in settings familiar and exotic, which reveal a keen satire of upper-class manners, an unblinking recognition of passion’s limits, and a powerfully observant style. Her novels include The Age of Innocence, The House of Mirth, Ethan Frome, and The Buccaneers, each of which was adapted into a major feature films or television series. Wharton’s story collections include Old New York, The Descent of Man, and Roman Fever and Other Stories.

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

“How to Travel with a Salmon” by Umberto Eco, translation by William Weaver. From How to Travel with a Salmon and Other Essays (Harcourt, 1994). First appeared in The Paris Review (Issue 134, Summer 1994). Copyright © 1994 by Umberto Eco. Translation copyright © 1994 by William Weaver. Used by permission of La nave di teseo Literary Agency.

“The Weekend Travelers” by Elizabeth Spencer, from The Southern Woman: New and Selected Fiction (Modern Library 2001). Copyright © 2001 by Elizabeth Spencer. Used by permission of McIntosh & Otis, Inc.

"The Man, the Restaurant, and the Eiffel Tower" by Ben Loory, from Tales of Falling and Flying (Penguin, 2017). Copyright © 2011 by Ben Loory. Used by permission of the author.

“Roman Fever” by Edith Wharton. From Roman Fever and Other Stories (Charles Scribner’s Sons 1964). Copyright © 1934 by Edith Wharton. Used by permission of the Edith Wharton Estate and the Watkins/Loomis Agency.