Rick Bass is the author of more than thirty books. He has been awarded the Story Prize, the James Jones First Novel Fellowship, a PEN/Nelson Algren Award Special Citation for fiction, was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award, and is a recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship. He has served as contributing editor to Sierra, Tricycle: The Buddhist Review, Big Sky Journal, Amicus Journal, Outside, Orion, Field & Stream, The Contemporary Wingshooter, and many other publications. He currently serves on the editorial board of Whitefish Review. Bass was born and raised in Texas, worked as a petroleum geologist in Mississippi, and has lived in Montana’s Yaak Valley for almost thirty years. His most recent work, Wrecking Ball: Race, Friendship, God, and Football, was published in 2025.
Tate Donovan has appeared in more than 45 films, including Crime 101, The Holdovers, Respect, Worth, Rocketman, The Upside, Manchester by the Sea, Argo, Good Night and Good Luck, Memphis Belle, Ethan Frome, Love Potion #9, Clean and Sober, and the title voice in Disney’s Hercules. His television credits include The Man in the High Castle, 24, Damages, The OC, and Friends. Donovan has appeared on Broadway in the Tony Award–winning productions of Good People, Amy’s View, and Picnic. He has also directed several episodes of Madam Secretary, Damages, Glee, Weeds, Gossip Girl, Nip/Tuck, The OC, and Bloodline, as well as the ESPN documentary Arthur and Johnnie, for which he won an Emmy.
Louise Erdrich is the author of a memoir, three books of poetry, and more than a dozen works of fiction, including the short story collection The Red Convertible and the award-winning novels Love Medicine, The Plague of Doves, The Round House, which won the National Book Award in 2012, LaRose, Future Home of the Living God, The Night Watchman, which was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 2021, The Sentence, The Mighty Red, and most recently the short story collection Python’s Kiss.
John Benjamin Hickey won a Tony Award for Best Featured Actor in a Play for his performance in The Normal Heart. He also received a Tony Nomination for The Inheritance. Additionally, he has appeared on Broadway in Cabaret, The Crucible, Mary Stuart, and Six Degrees of Separation. His screen credits include an Emmy-nominated performance in The Big C, Manhattan, Difficult People, Pitch Perfect, Get On Up, Truth, Barry, Mom, Hostiles, Forever My Girl, Mapplethorpe, Jessica Jones, Gossip Girl, In Treatment, Sublet, The Good Wife and its spinoff series The Good Fight, Salem’s Lot, Lilly, Daredevil: Born Again, and The Terror. Hickey directed the hit Broadway and West End revivals of Plaza Suite starring Matthew Broderick and Sarah Jessica Parker, and returns to Broadway this fall to direct a revival of Other Desert Cities, starring Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Ed Harris, Allison Janney, and Lily Rabe.
Meg Wolitzer is the New York Times bestselling author of The Female Persuasion, The Interestings, The Ten-Year Nap, The Position, and The Wife, among other novels. A musical of The Interestings is in development. Wolitzer was the guest editor of The Best American Short Stories 2017, and also writes books for young readers. She is a faculty member in the Creative Writing Program at Stony Brook University, where she co-founded and co-directs BookEnds, a yearlong intensive for emerging novelists.
CREDITS
“The Hollow Children,” by Louise Erdrich, first published in The New Yorker (November 21, 2022) and collected in Python’s Kiss: Stories (Harper, 2026). Copyright © 2022 by Louise Erdrich. Used by permission of The Wylie Agency, LLC.
“Fires,” by Rick Bass, from In the Loyal Mountains (Houghton Mifflin, 1995). First appeared in The Quarterly (1990). Copyright © 1990 by Rick Bass. Used by permission of the author.
