Michael Ian Black is known for such seminal television programs as The State, Stella, and Michael and Michael Have Issues, all of which he co-created, wrote, and starred in. In addition to performing stand-up across the country, Black has appeared in many films and television shows, including Ed, Wet Hot American Summer, Burning Love, They Came Together, The Jim Gaffigan Show, Inside Amy Schumer, VH1’s I Love the '80s,The Good Fight, Dogs in a Park, Another Period, Insatiable, Reno 911!, and Wet Hot American Summer: 10 Years Later. Black currently hosts the podcast Obscure. He has written best-selling books for both children and adults, including A Better Man: A (Mostly Serious) Letter to My Son, published in 2020. He can currently be seen in Linoleum and the forthcoming biopic Spinning Gold.
Sigrid Nunez is the author of the novels The Friend, Salvation City, The Last of Her Kind, A Feather on the Breath of God, and For Rouenna, among others. She is also the author of Sempre Susan: A Memoir of Susan Sontag. Nunuz has been the recipient of several awards, including a Whiting Award, the Rome Prize in Literature, and a Berlin Prize Fellowship.
Christina Pickles has appeared on and off-Broadway in Man and Superman, The Seagull, You Can’t Take it With You, War and Peace, The Misanthrope, A Pagan Place by Edna O’Brien, and Chez Nous by Peter Nichols. She received Los Angeles Critics Awards for Cloud Nine, Undiscovered Country, and The Letters of Janet Flanner. Her television credits include Saint Elsewhere, earning her five Emmy nominations; Friends, for which she received an Emmy nomination as Ross and Monica’s dysfunctional mother; How I Met Your Mother; Childrens Hospital; Dollface; Great News; Doubt; and 9JKL. Her films include Grace of My Heart, Legends of the Fall, Baz Luhrmann’s Romeo + Juliet, The Wedding Singer, and Finding Hannah.
Simon Rich is a frequent contributor to The New Yorker. He has written for Saturday Night Live, Pixar, and The Simpsons and is the creator of the TV shows Man Seeking Woman and Miracle Workers, which he based on his books. His other collections include Ant Farm, Spoiled Brats, and Hits and Misses, which won the 2019 Thurber Prize for American Humor. His latest book, New Teeth, was published in 2021.
Meg Wolitzer is the New York Times bestselling author of The Female Persuasion, The Interestings, The Ten-Year Nap, and The Wife, which was adapted to film in 2018, starring Glenn Close and Jonathan Pryce. She was the guest editor of The Best American Short Stories 2017, and has also published books for young readers, mostly recently a picture book, Millions of Maxes. Wolitzer 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. She is excited to be the new host of the literary radio show and podcast Selected Shorts.
CREDITS
"This is It" by Sigrid Nunez. First appeared in Fiction (Volume 11, #1, 1992) Copyright © 1992 by Sigrid Nunez. Used by permission of the author.
“I Love Girl” by Simon Rich from The Last Girlfriend on Earth. (Reagan Arthur/Little Brown 2013). First appeared in The New Yorker (December 17, 2012). Copyright © 2013 by Simon Rich. Used by permission of Levine Greenberg Literary Agent, Inc.
