Uprooted

Becca Blackwell has collaborated with Young Jean Lee, Half Straddle, Jennifer Miller's Circus Amok, Richard Maxwell, Erin Markey, Sharon Hayes, Theater of the Two Headed Calf, Lisa D'Amour, and more. Film and television credits include High Maintenance, Ramy, Marriage Story, Shameless, Deadman's Barstool, Jack in the Box, If Found, Sort Of, She’s Clean, You Can’t Stay Here, BROS, and Survival of the Thickest. Their solo shows, They, Themself and Schmerm and Schmermie's Choice, have toured across the US. Blackwell is the creator and star of the short film As Schmerm as It Gets, and was a recipient of the Doris Duke Impact Artist Award, the Franklin Furnace Award, and the Creative Capital Award. They recently made their Broadway debut in Is This a Room. Blackwell’s latest work, Snatch Adams & Tainty McCracken Present It’s That Time of the Month, will have its world premiere at Soho Rep this fall.

Teagle F. Bougere recently portrayed James Baldwin in The American Vicarious production of Debate: Baldwin vs. Buckley, in New York City 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, and Bull, as well as seven episodes for the Law & Order franchise.

Jane Curtin has appeared on Broadway in Noises Off, Candida, and Our Town. Her off-Broadway work includes Love Letters and the musical revue Pretzels, which she co-wrote. She starred in the television series 3rd Rock from the Sun and won back-to-back Emmy Awards for her role on Kate & Allie. She is an original cast member of Saturday Night Live and also starred in the television film series The Librarian and its spin-off, The Librarians. Her film credits include Coneheads; Antz; I Love You, Man; I Don’t Know How She Does It; The Heat; The Spy Who Dumped Me; Can You Ever Forgive Me?; Ode to Joy; Godmothered; and Queen Bees. She starred on the television series Unforgettable and has had guest appearances on The Good Wife, 48 Hours ’til Monday, The Good Fight, Broad City, and United We Fall. Curtin can currently be seen in the film Jules, opposite Sir Ben Kingsley, and Bupkis, starring Pete Davidson.

Meron Hadero is an Ethiopian American who was born in Addis Ababa and came to the U.S. via Germany as a young child. Meron's short stories have won the 2021 Caine Prize for African Writing, shortlisted for the 2019 Caine Prize for African Writing, and appear in Best American Short Stories, Ploughshares, McSweeney’s Quarterly Concern, Zyzzyva, The Iowa Review, Missouri Review, 40 Short Stories: A Portable Anthology, and others. She's also been published in The New York Times Book Review, the anthology The Displaced: Refugee Writers on Refugee Lives, and the anthology Letter to a Stranger: Essays to the Ones Who Haunt Us. A 2019-2020 Steinbeck Fellow at San Jose State University, and a fellow at Yaddo, Ragdale, and MacDowell, Meron holds an MFA in creative writing from the University of Michigan, a JD from Yale Law School, and a BA in history from Princeton with a certificate in American studies. Her collection A Down Home Meal for These Difficult Times was published in 2022.

Maria Dahvana Headley is the New York Times bestselling and Hugo Award-winning author of eight books, most recently Beowulf: A New Translation, and the novel The Mere Wife, both from Farrar, Straus & Giroux. Her short stories have won a World Fantasy Award and been shortlisted for the Shirley Jackson and Nebula Awards, among others. She was raised with a wolf and a pack of sled dogs in the high desert of rural Idaho.

Anne Tyler was born in Minneapolis, Minnesota, in 1941 and grew up in Raleigh, North Carolina. She is the author of more than twenty novels. Her twentieth novel, A Spool of Blue Thread, was short-listed for the Man Booker Prize in 2015. Her eleventh novel, Breathing Lessons, was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in 1988. Tyler is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters. Her latest novel, French Braid, was published in 2022.

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

“The Thief’s Tale,” by Meron Hadero, from A Down Home Meal for These Difficult Times (Restless Books, 2022). Copyright © 2022 by Meron Hadero. Used by permission of the author.

“The Tallest Doll in New York City” by Maria Dahvana Headley, from Tor.com (April 2014). Copyright © 2014 by Maria Dahvana Headley. Used by permission of the author.

“The Feather Behind the Rock,” by Anne Tyler, as published in The New Yorker (August 4, 1967). Copyright © 1967, 1970 by Anne Tyler. Used by permission of Salky Literary Management.