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, Our Son, The Anne Frank Gift Shop, Dumb Money, Oscar Wilde About America, Bulldozer, The Surrender, Ransom Canyon, 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 the Newbery Medal winner The Eyes and the Impossible, along with bestsellers The Every, The Monk of Mokha, The Circle, A Hologram for the King, and A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius. His work has been nominated for the National Book Award, the Pulitzer Prize, and the National Book Critics Circle Award. He is the founder of McSweeney’s, an independent publishing company based in San Francisco, and cofounder of 826 National, a network of educational centers around the country offering free tutoring to kids of all backgrounds.

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, Daredevil: Born Again, Partner Track, and FBI. 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, 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 is the author of the nationally bestselling novel The Incendiaries, which was named a best book of the year by more than forty publications and was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle John Leonard Award. With Garth Greenwell, Kwon coedited the bestselling Kink, a New York Times Notable Book. Her writing has appeared in The New York Times, The New Yorker, Vanity Fair, and elsewhere. She has received fellowships and awards from the National Endowment for the Arts, Yaddo, and MacDowell. Born in Seoul, Kwon has lived most of her life in the United States.Her most recent novel, Exhibit, was published in May.

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. She is the author of the memoir Life in the Garden, and her most recent short story collection, Metamorphosis, was published in 2021. Lively was awarded the OBE in 1989, the CBE in 2001 and the DBE in 2012.

Hettienne Park is best known for her role as Beverly Katz on Hannibal and Tamika Collins on Stephen King's The Outsider. Her additional screen credits include The Last of Us, The Girls on the Bus, Don’t Look Up, written and directed by Adam McKay, Gossip Girl, The OA, Blacklist, High Maintenance, Bride Wars, Damages, The Good Wife, Young Adult, Blindspot, 9-1-1: Lonestar, Prodigal Son, Law & Order, and more. Park appeared on Broadway in Seminar with Alan Rickman and off-Broadway in Tony Kushner's The Intelligent Homosexual's Guide to Capitalism and Socialism with a Key to the Scriptures, earning her a Theatre World Award, honoring her outstanding debuts both on and off Broadway.

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

“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.