Unwrapping the Holidays

Jayne Atkinson is best known for her long-running roles on the television series 24, Criminal Minds, Bluff City Law, and House of Cards. A two-time Tony nominee, she has appeared on Broadway in All My Sons, The Rainmaker, Ivanov, Enchanted April, for which she won an Outer Critics Circle Award, and Blithe Spirit. Additional film and television credits include Death and Other Details, Clarice, Baby Ruby, The Good Wife, Law & Order, The Education of Max Bickford, Syriana, Recount, Free Willy, and The Village. Onstage, Atkinson was recently honored with an Outer Critics Circle Award for her performance in Lea Romeo's Still at DR2 Theatre in New York City.

Teagle F. Bougere recently portrayed James Baldwin in The American Vicarious production of Debate: Baldwin vs. Buckley, in New York City, Chicago, Florence, and London. He co-starred with Catherine Zeta-Jones in the television series Queen America. Bougere's Broadway credits include The Crucible, A Raisin in the Sun, and The Tempest. He was featured in The Public Theater’s productions of Socrates and the much acclaimed production of Coriolanus in Central Park. His most recent New York stage appearance was the world premiere of The New Englanders at Manhattan Theater Club. Additional theater credits include Is God Is at SoHo Rep, Beast in the Jungle, the title role in the stage adaptation of Ralph Ellison’s novel Invisible Man at The Court Theater in Chicago, The Studio Theatre in Washington, D.C., and The Huntington in Boston, Julius Caesar and Cymbeline for The Public Theater in Central Park, A Soldier’s Play at Second Stage, A Fair Country at Lincoln Center, Last Dance for Sybil (with Ruby Dee) at the New Federal Theatre, An Iliad (one-man show) at the Pittsburgh Public Theater, and Joe Turner’s Come and Gone and Blue Door at Berkeley Rep. His film and television credits include Hill ’n’ Gully, The Path, The Mist, Good Friday, Conviction, Cosby, The Job, Third Watch, Murder in Black and White, A Night at the Museum, The Imposters, The Pelican Brief, Two Weeks Notice, What the Deaf Man Heard, A Gifted Man, The Big C, The Blacklist, and Bull, as well as seven episodes for the Law & Order franchise.

John Cheever (1912 – 1982) was the author of four novels, a novella, and more than 100 short stories, many of which were published in The New Yorker. His first novel, The Wapshot Chronicle, won the 1958 National Book Award, and The Stories of John Cheever was awarded both the National Book Critics Circle Award and the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. Cheever was the recipient of a Guggenheim fellowship, the Edward MacDowell Medal, and the National Medal for Literature by the American Academy of Arts and Letters, among numerous honors.

Sherrie Flick is the author of the flash fiction chapbook I Call this Flirting, the novel Reconsidering Happiness, which was a semi-finalist for the VCU First Novelist Award, and the short story collections Whiskey, Etc. and Thank Your Lucky Stars. Her work, both fiction and nonfiction, has been featured in Ploughshares, Prairie Schooner, North American Review, The Wall Street Journal, Creative Nonfiction, Pittsburgh Quarterly, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, and Western Pennsylvania History, among other publications. Flick was co-editor for the 2023 anthology Flash Fiction America, senior editor at SmokeLong Quarterly, and series editor for The Best Small Fictions 2018 with guest editor Aimee Bender. She served as editorial assistant for Western Pennsylvania History Magazine, Associate Curator of Education at the Frick Art and Historical Center, and co-director of the Chautauqua Writers’ Festival. She has taught interdisciplinary writing programs for many organizations, including Carnegie Museum of Art and Shiftworks. Flick serves as the McGee Distinguished Visiting Professor in Creative Writing at Davidson College, North Carolina. Her awards include a 2023 Creative Development Award, six PA Partners in the Arts grants, an “Arts Experience Initiative” grant from The Heinz Endowments, a Golden Quill Award, and two Artist Opportunity Grants and a Work of Art Award for Artistic Vibrancy from the Greater Pittsburgh Arts Council.

James Naughton has won Tony Awards as Best Actor in a Musical for City of Angels and Chicago. On Broadway, he directed the Tony-nominated productions of Arthur Miller’s The Price and Thornton Wilder’s Our Town, starring Paul Newman. He also directed the television production of Our Town for Showtime and Masterpiece Theatre. He has appeared in numerous films and television shows, including The Devil Wears Prada, Damages, The Paper Chase, Gossip Girl, Ally McBeal, Planet of the Apes, Hostages, Turks & Caicos, The Affair, The Tap, The Independents, The Romanoffs, The Accidental Wolf, And Just Like That…, Not the Same Clarence, Faraday & Company, Three Women,The First Wives Club, Cathedral, Law & Order, and SilverSizzle. He recently starred in the short film Sit with Me While I Die, for which he won the Best Male Performance at the Bridgeport Festival.

Amy Krouse Rosenthal (1965 – 2017) was the author of more than thirty children’s books, four memoirs, including The Book of Eleven: An Itemized Collection of Brain Lint and Encyclopedia of an Ordinary Life, and a line of keepsake journals. She was also the creator of the short films 17 Things I Made, The Kindness Thought Bubble, and The Reckoning of Lovely. Rosenthal’s work was featured in The New York Times, Hallmark Magazine, McSweeney’s, and Parenting, among other publications, and she was a frequent contributor to NPR and the TED Conference.

Adina Verson’s screen credits includeOnly Murders in the Building, The Strain, Mozart in the Jungle, Wormwood, The Kitchen, New Amsterdam, And Just Like That..., and the Sundance selected short film Troy. On stage, she was nominated for a Lucille Lortel Award for her role in The Lucky Ones, following her Broadway debut in the Tony Award–winning play Indecent. Additional theater credits include productions such as Wives at Playwrights Horizons, A Transparent Musical at Center Theater Group, Liberation at the Roundabout Theatre Company, and productions at Atlantic Theatre Company, MCC, The Vineyard, Theater for a New Audience, Yale Rep, Seattle Rep, the Guthrie, and Shakespeare Theatre Company in Washington, DC.

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

“Interview with God” by Amy Krouse Rosenthal. First commissioned by NPR for Hanukkah Lights 2002. Copyright © 2002 by Amy Krouse Rosenthal. Used by permission of The Amy Rennert Agency.

“Heidi Is Dead” by Sherrie Flick, from Whiskey, Etc. (Autumn House Press, 2016). Copyright © 2016 by Sherrie Flick. Used by permission of the author.

“Christmas Is a Sad Season for the Poor” by John Cheever, from The Stories of John Cheever (Knopf, 1978). First appeared in The New Yorker (December 1949). Copyright © 1949, 1977, 1978 by John Cheever, used by permission of The Wylie Agency.