The Way I See It

Ramona Ausubel is the author of the novel No One Is Here Except All of Us, and a collection of short stories, A Guide to Being Born. Winner of the PEN Center USA Literary Award for Fiction and the VCU Cabell First Novelist Award, she has also been a finalist for the New York Public Library Young Lions Fiction Award, and long-listed for the Frank O’Connor International Short Story Award and the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award. Her work has appeared in The New Yorker, One Story, Electric Literature, Five Chapters, The Green Mountains Review, Slice, and collected in The Best American Fantasy, and online in The Paris Review.

Fred Hechinger made his film debut in Eighth Grade, and subsequently has gone on to be seen in Alex Strangelove, Human Capital, The Woman in the Window, Fear Street, Two Against Nature, News of the World, The Underground Railroad, Italian Studies, Fear Street, The White Lotus, Pam & Tommy, Butcher's Crossing, and The Pale Blue Eye. He attended the Thalia Kids’ Book Club Camp at Symphony Space for six years and came back as a counselor for one summer. His forthcoming projects include The Nickel Boys, Thelma, Kraven the Hunter, and Hell of a Summer.

Charles Johnson is a novelist, essayist, literary scholar, philosopher, cartoonist, screenwriter, the author of 27 books, and professor emeritus at the University of Washington in Seattle. A MacArthur fellow, his fiction includes Night Hawks, Dr. King’s Refrigerator, Dreamer, Faith and the Good Thing, Oxherding Tale, and Middle Passage, for which he won the National Book Award. In 2002 he received the Arts and Letters Award in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters.

J. Robert Lennon is the author of nine novels, including Familiar, Broken River, and Subdivision, and the story collections Pieces for the Left Hand, See You in Paradise, and Let Me Think. He teaches creative writing at Cornell University.

Arnell Powell has guest starred and recurred on several television series, including Stranger Things, Lone Star 911, Bosch, Snowfall, and most recently as Kareem Abdul-Jabbar’s father on HBO’s Winning Time. His film appearances include The Conjuring and Hidden Figures. He can be seen in numerous commercials and is an award–winning Audiobook narrator. Powell earned his M.F.A. in Acting from NYU’s Graduate Acting School. He has taught at Harlem School of the Arts as well as for the NYC Dept of Education, and coaches privately here in Los Angeles.

Amy Ryan has performed in numerous Broadway and off-Broadway productions, earning Tony nominations for both Uncle Vanya and A Streetcar Named Desire. She received an OBIE award for her performance in Mike Bartlett’s play LOVE LOVE LOVE. Ryan’s television credits include Broad City, Robot Chicken, High Maintenance, In Treatment, The Wire, The Office, and most recently, Only Murders in the Building. She was nominated for an Academy Award for her role in the film Gone Baby Gone. Additional film credits include Bridge of Spies, Birdman, Louder Than Bombs, Don Verdean, Changeling, Capote, Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead, Green Zone, Win Win, Beautiful Boy, Late Night, Strange But True, Worth, Lost Girls, and Beau Is Afraid. Upcoming projects include Sugar, Passing Through, and Wolfs.

Martin Short is a Canadian-American actor, comedian, and writer. He has received various awards including two Primetime Emmys and a Tony. Short was awarded as an Officer of the Order of Canada in 2019. His extensive film and television credits include SCTV, Saturday Night Live, Three Amigos, the Father of the Bride I & II, Primetime Glick, Jiminy Glick in Lalawood, The Morning Show, and Schmigadoon! In 2015, Short started touring nationally with fellow comedian Steve Martin. In 2018, they released their Netflix special, An Evening You Will Forget for the Rest of Your Life, for which they received three Emmy Award nominations. Since 2021, he has co-starred in the Hulu comedy series Only Murders in the Building alongside Martin and Selena Gomez. For his performance he has earned Emmy and Golden Globe nominations, plus Screen Actors Guild and Critics Choice awards.

Meg Wolitzer is the New York Times bestselling author of The Female Persuasion, The Interestings, The Ten-Year Nap, and The Wife, among other books. She was the guest editor of The Best American Short Stories 2017, and 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

“You Can Find Love Now” by Ramona Ausubel, from The New Yorker (June 2014). Copyright © 2014 by Ramona Ausubel. Used by permission of Janklow & Nesbit Associates.

“The Weave” by Charles Johnson. Copyright © 2014 by Charles Johnson. Originally appeared in The Iowa Review. Reprinted by permission of Georges Borchardt, Inc. on behalf of the author.

“Blue Light, Red Light” by J. Robert Lennon, from Let Me Think (Graywolf Press, 2021). Copyright © 2021 by J. Robert Lennon. Used by permission of the author.