There’s More to the Story

Carmen de Lavallade has had an unparalleled career in dance, theater, film, and television. Her dance career includes having ballets created for her by Lester Horton, Geoffrey Holder, Alvin Ailey, Glen Tetley, John Butler, and Agnes de Mille. De Lavallade succeeded her cousin Janet Collins as the principal dancer with the Metropolitan Opera and was a guest artist with the American Ballet Theater. She has choreographed for the Dance Theatre of Harlem, Philadanco, the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, and productions of Porgy and Bess and Die Meistersinger at the Metropolitan Opera. Among her numerous stage credits are off-Broadway productions of Death of a Salesman and Othello, and House of Flowers and A Streetcar Named Desire on Broadway. She premiered a solo retrospective of her career entitled As I Remember It in 2015, and her most recent work includes 651 ARTS’ FLY: Five First Ladies of Dance, Step-Mother by Ruby Dee, and Post Black by Regina Taylor. In 2017, de Lavallade was named a Kennedy Center Honors recipient for her lifetime contributions to American culture.

Over a writing career that spanned three decades, Philip K. Dick (1928 - 1982) published 36 science fiction novels and 121 short stories. Many of his novels and short stories have been adapted to film and television, notably: Blade Runner (based on Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?), Total Recall, Minority Report, A Scanner Darkly, and The Man in the High Castle. The recipient of critical acclaim and numerous awards throughout his career, Dick was inducted into the Science Fiction Hall of Fame in 2005, and in 2007 the Library of America published a selection of his novels in three volumes. Dick is the first science fiction writer to be included in the series. His work has been translated into more than twenty-five languages.

Paul Giamatti has been honored with two Golden Globe Awards, three Screen Actors Guild Awards, and an Emmy for his work in film and television. His screen credits include American Splendor, Sideways, Cinderella Man, for which he was nominated for an Academy Award, the title role in the HBO miniseries John Adams, Barney’s Version, Win Win, 12 Years a Slave, Love & Mercy, Inside Amy Schumer, Straight Outta Compton, BoJack Horseman, At Home with Amy Sedaris, and Lodge 49. Giamatti currently stars in Showtime’s Billions, which recently premiered its fifth season. He will appear in the forthcoming films Gunpowder Milkshake, A Mouthful of Air, and Jungle Cruise.

Colby Minifie can currently be seen in Fear the Walking Dead, and The Boys. She has appeared on Broadway in The Pillowman,Long Day’s Journey Into Night, and Six Degrees Of Separation. Off-Broadway in Punk Rock, Close Up Space, Landscape of the Body, The Dark at the Top of the Stairs, and City Of. Her film and television credits include Law & Order, Glee, Nurse Jackie, The Blacklist, The Michael J. Fox Show, Black Box, Deep Powder, Camilla Dickinson, The Greatest, The Winning Season, Don’t Think Twice,Paterno, Submission, The Super, An Actor Prepares, Radium Girls, Madam Secretary, Dietland, The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, and Marvel’s Jessica Jones.

Maulik Pancholy is an actor, author, and activist. He is best known for his television roles on 30 Rock, Weeds, Whitney, The Good Fight, and for lending his voice to the long-running animated series Phineas & Ferb and Sanjay & Craig. On stage, he starred on Broadway in Terrence McNally’s It's Only a Play, in The New Group’s production of Good for Otto, and most recently returned to Broadway in Bess Wohl’s Grand Horizons at the Helen Hayes Theatre. Pancholy’s debut novel, The Best at It, was named a 2020 Stonewall Honor Book, a Junior Library Guild Selection, and received starred reviews from Kirkus Reviews, Publishers Weekly, and the American Library Association’s Booklist. Pancholy is the co-founder of the anti-bullying organization ActToChange.org. Pancholy will star in a streaming production of Becky Mode's solo show Fully Committed, available March 23-April 11. Presented by the George Street Playhouse.

Simon Rich is an American humorist, novelist, and television writer, known for being the youngest writer ever hired on Saturday Night Live and writing the Thurber Prize-nominated humor collection Ant Farm: And Other Desperate Situations. His most recent work, Hits and Misses, was published in 2018. He is the creator and showrunner of the FXX series Man Seeking Woman, which is based on his collection of short stories The Last Girlfriend on Earth, and the TBS series Miracle Workers, based on his novel What in God’s Name. His four-part novella Sell Out was adapted into the film An American Pickle starring Seth Rogen. Rich is a frequent contributor to the “Shouts & Murmurs” section of The New Yorker.

Laura van den Berg is the author of the story collections What the World Will Look Like When All the Water Leaves Us and The Isle of Youth, and the novels Find Me and The Third Hotel, which was a finalist for the New York Public Library Young Lions Fiction Award and an Indie Next pick, and was named a best book of 2018 by more than a dozen publications. She is the recipient of a Rosenthal Family Foundation Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the Bard Fiction Prize, a PEN/O. Henry Award, and a MacDowell Colony Fellowship, and is a two-time finalist for the Frank O'Connor International Short Story Award.

Alice Walker won the Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award for her novel The Color Purple, which was adapted into a film and Tony Award-winning Broadway musical. Additional best-selling novels include By the Light of My Father’s Smile, Possessing the Secret of Joy, Meridian, and The Temple of My Familiar. Walker is the author of numerous collections of short stories, essays, poetry, and children’s books, including The Cushion in the Road and The World Will Follow Joy Turning Madness into Flowers. Walker is the subject of the 2013 documentary film Beauty in Truth.