Sleight of Hand

Kate Burton was nominated for Tony Awards for her work in Hedda Gabler, The Elephant Man, and The Constant Wife. Additional Broadway credits include Spring Awakening, The Beauty Queen of Leenane, Jake’s Women, Company, Some Americans Abroad, and most recently, Present Laughter. Her film credits include Big Trouble in Little China; The Ice Storm; Unfaithful; 2 Days in New York; Liberal Arts; 127 Hours; Where'd You Go, Bernadette?; Before/During/After; Breaking; and Our Son. On television, she has appeared in multiple Law & Orders, Empire Falls, Rescue Me, Veep, Grimm, Modern Family, Supergirl, The Gifted, Strange Angel, Scandal, Perfect Harmony, Homeland, Charmed, 13 Reasons Why, Inventing Anna, The Dropout, The First Lady, and Grey's Anatomy, for which she has received numerous Emmy nominations. Burton has directed at the LA Philharmonic and is a professor at the University of Southern California.

Dave Eggers is the author of many books, including The Every, The Circle, The Monk of Mokha, and the National Book Award finalist A Hologram for the King, as well as numerous books for young readers, including Her Right Foot, Faraway Things, and The Lifters. He is the founder of the independent publishing company McSweeney's and the college-access nonprofit ScholarMatch, and the co-founder of 826 Valencia, a youth writing center that has inspired dozens of other centers worldwide. He is the winner of the Muhammad Ali Humanitarian Award for Education and the Dayton Literary Peace Prize.

Daniel Gerroll was born in London and studied at the Central School of Speech and Drama. He appeared in Once a Catholic in the West End in 1976. From there, he went on to star in numerous films, television shows, and live productions. His film credits include Chariots of Fire, Big Business, The Namesake, The Amazing Spider-Man 2, and Still Alice. On television, Gerroll has had recurring roles on Sisters, Cashmere Mafia, The Starter Wife, Ugly Betty, Madoff, and can be seen currently on Partner Track. His theater work has earned him the Theatre World Award for The Slab Boys and Knuckle, the Outer Critics Circle Award for Translations, and the Village Voice's Obie Award for Sustained Excellence of Performance. His Broadway credits include Plenty, The Homecoming, Enchanted April, and High Society.

Patricia Kalember’s stage credits include The White Card, The Nerd, Losing Louie, Y2k, Don’t Dress for Dinner, Sea of Tranquility, Loose Knit, and From Above. She played the role of Gloria Steinem in Gloria: A Life in New York and Boston. She received an Outer Critics Circle nomination for her role in the original cast of The Foreigner. On television, she's had recurring roles on The Tick, Power, thirtysomething, and starred in Sisters. Other television credits include Law & Order: SVU, Power, Orange Is the New Black, Gossip Girl, Blue Bloods, Allegiance, Madam Secretary, Veep, The Good Wife, and the HBO miniseries Olive Kitteridge. Her numerous films include Jacob’s Ladder, Path to War, A Far Off Place, Signs, Rabbit Hole, The Company Men, Limitless, Girl Most Likely, and Run All Night. She can currently be seen on Power Book IV: Force.

R. O. Kwon’s debut novel, The Incendiaries, published in 2018, was named a best book of the year by more than forty publications and received the Housatonic Book Award and was a finalist or nominated for the National Book Critics Circle Award for Best First Book, and the Los Angeles Times First Book Prize, among others. Kwon coedited the nationally bestselling collection Kink, a New York Times Editor’s Choice. Her writing has appeared in The New York Times, The Guardian, Vanity Fair, The Paris Review, Bookforum, NPR, and elsewhere. She has received fellowships and awards from the National Endowment for the Arts, Yaddo, MacDowell, the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, and the Sewanee Writers’ Conference. Born in Seoul, Kwon has lived most of her life in the United States.

Dame Penelope Lively is a novelist, short story writer, and author of children’s books. Her novels have won several literary awards, including the Booker Prize for Moon Tiger in 1987. The Road to Lichfield and According to Mark were also shortlisted for the Booker Prize. Her children’s book, The Ghost of Thomas Kempe, was awarded the Carnegie Medal, and A Stitch in Time won a Whitbread Award. Family Album was shortlisted for the Orange Prize for Fiction in 2010. “The Third Wife” is a story taken from The Purple Swamp Hen and Other Stories. The collection was published by Viking (US) and Fig Tree (UK) in 2016. Dame Penelope’s most recent short story collection, Metamorphosis, was published in 2021. She was awarded the OBE in 1989, the CBE in 2001 and the DBE in 2012.

Hettienne Park is an actress and writer best known for her roles on Gossip Girl, Don’t Look Up, The Outsider, and Hannibal. Additional screen credits include The OA, Blacklist, High Maintenance, Bride Wars, Damages, The Good Wife, Young Adult, Blindspot, 9-1-1: Lonestar, and Prodigal Son. Park appeared on Broadway in Seminar and off-Broadway in The Intelligent Homosexual's Guide to Capitalism and Socialism with a Key to the Scriptures; her stage work earned her a Theatre World Award, honoring her outstanding debuts on and off-Broadway. Upcoming projects include the TV series The Girls on the Bus.

Meg Wolitzer is the New York Times bestselling author of The Female Persuasion, The Interestings, The Ten-Year Nap, and The Wife, which was adapted to film in 2018, starring Glenn Close and Jonathan Pryce. She was the guest editor of The Best American Short Stories 2017, and has also published books for young readers, mostly recently a picture book, Millions of Maxes. Wolitzer 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

“The Third Wife,” by Penelope Lively, a short story from The Purple Swamp Hen and Other Stories (Penguin, 2017). Copyright © 2017 by Penelope Lively. Used by permission of David Higham Associates.

"Tempo," by R.O. Kwon. Commissioned by Selected Shorts. Copyright © 2018 by R.O. Kwon. Used by permission of Trident Media Group.

"The Alaska of Giants and Gods," by Dave Eggers, from The New Yorker (November 17, 2014). Copyright © 2014 by Dave Eggers. Used by permission of The Wylie Agency.