The Quiet Part Out Loud

Dylan Baker is an actor whose many film and television credits include Dream Scenario; LaRoy, Texas; The Resort; Inside Man; Hunters; Happiness; The Hot Zone: Anthrax; The Good Fight and The Good Wife; Homeland; Little Women; Spider-Man 2 & 3; Selma; Confirmation; Kings; Damages; The Americans; On a String; The Gilded Age; Only Murders in the Building; and Floating Carousel. His extensive theater credits include La Bete, for which he was nominated for a Tony Award, Corruption at Lincoln Center, The Audience with Helen Mirren, the Broadway revival of The Front Page, Bernhardt/Hamlet, and Medea at BAM. In addition to his acting credits, he directed the 2014 film 23 Blast. Baker is also an audiobook narrator and was honored with the Audie Award for his reading of Jonathan Franzen’s novel The Corrections and is the voice of Doctor Doom in Marvel’s Wastelanders: Doom. Upcoming projects include 10-13, Northbound, The Simunaut's Tale, Color Your Hurt, and Aversion.

Jessica Cohen shared the 2017 Man Booker International Prize with author David Grossman for her translation of A Horse Walks into a Bar. She has translated works by Amos Oz, Etgar Keret, Dorit Rabinyan, Ronit Matalon, Nir Baram, and others.

Ira Glass is the host and creator of the radio program This American Life. The program is heard each week by over 3 million people. Since its creation in 1995, it's won the highest honors for journalistic and broadcasting excellence, including the Pulitzer Prize.

Etgar Keret was born in Ramat Gan and now lives in Tel Aviv. A winner of the French Chevalier des Arts et des Lettres, he is the author of the memoir The Seven Good Years and story collections like Fly Already. His work has been translated into forty-five languages and has appeared in The New Yorker, The Wall Street Journal, The Paris Review, and The New York Times. Autocorrect was published in May.

Michael Imperioli is the author of the critically acclaimed novel The Perfume Burned His Eyes and Woke Up This Morning: The Definitive Oral History of The Sopranos. He is best known for his Emmy-winning performance as Christopher Moltisanti on The Sopranos. He also wrote five episodes of the show and was co-screenwriter of the film Summer of Sam directed by Spike Lee. Imperioli has appeared in six of Lee’s films and has also acted in films by Martin Scorsese, Abel Ferrara, Walter Hill, Peter Jackson, and The Hughes Brothers. His recent film and television credits include One Night in Miami, The White Lotus, This Fool, Oh Canada, American Horror Stories, The Nice Guys, and Song Sung Blue. Onstage, Imperioli was recently seen in An Enemy of the People at Circle in the Square. Michael and his wife, Victoria, founded and were artistic directors of the off-Broadway theater Studio Dante, which was dedicated to new works of theater. They are co-owners of the Upper West Side bar and eatery Scarlet Lounge.

Bay Area native Elizabeth Stix writes and edits in Berkeley, California. Her stories have appeared in McSweeney’s, Tin House, Boulevard, The Los Angeles Times Sunday magazine, and elsewhere. She has contributed to numerous anthologies, including Best Microfiction 2019, Drivel, and 642 Things About You (That I Love). Her work was performed live at the New Short Fiction Series in LA, and her story “Alice” was optioned by Sneaky Little Sister Films. In the early 2000s, she founded the vanguard lit zine The Big Ugly Review. Her stories have won the Katherine Manoogian Scholarship Prize and the Bay Guardian Fiction Prize, and have been finalists or semi-finalists for the Disquiet Prize, Glimmer Train Fiction Open, Boulevard Emerging Writers Contest, Sherwood Anderson Prize, and others. Elizabeth has a BA from Brown University and an MA and MFA from San Francisco State. When she’s not writing, she can be found staying up way too late doing the New York Times Spelling Bee. Her debut short story collection, Things I Want Back from You, was published in 2024 by Black Lawrence Press.

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. The Interestings is currently being adapted as a musical, with a book by Sarah Ruhl and music and lyrics by Sara Bareilles. 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

“Polar Bear,” by Etgar Keret, translated by Jessica Cohen, from Autocorrect (Riverhead Books, 2025). Copyright © 2025 by Etgar Keret. English translation copyright © 2025 by Jessica Cohen. Used by permission of The Wylie Agency.

“The Acorn,” by Elizabeth Stix, from Things I Want Back from You (Black Lawrence Press, 2024). First published in McSweeney’s Quarterly Concern (Issue 57, October 2019). Copyright © 2019 by Elizabeth Stix. Used by permission of the author.