Wear and Tear

Anne Enright is the author of seven novels, including The Pleasure of Eliza Lynch; The Gathering; The Forgotten Waltz; and The Green Road. She has won the Davy Byrne's Irish Writing Award, the Royal Society of Authors Encore Prize, a Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction, and others. She has also published essays, the non-fiction book Making Babies: Stumbling into Motherhood and three collections of short stories, The Portable Virgin, for which she won the Rooney Prize for Irish Literature, Taking Pictures, and Yesterday’s Weather. Her writings have appeared in several magazines, including The New Yorker, The Paris Review, Granta, the London Review of Books, the Dublin Review, and Irish Times. Enright teaches at University College Dublin.

Joanne Harris is the internationally renowned and award-winning author of eighteen novels, plus novellas, scripts, short stories, libretti, lyrics, and articles, including a self-help book for writers, Ten Things About Writing. In 2000, her 1999 novel Chocolat was adapted to the screen, starring Juliette Binoche and Johnny Depp. She is an honorary Fellow of St Catharine's College, Cambridge, and is Chair of the Society of Authors. Her latest novel is the thriller A Narrow Door.

Jennifer Lim made her Broadway debut starring in David Henry Hwang’s Chinglish, for which she earned a Theater World Award for Outstanding Broadway Debut, the IASNY Trophy for Excellence, and a Drama Desk nomination. Additional theater projects include Golden Child at Signature Theatre, The World of Extreme Happiness at Manhattan Theatre Club, Usual Girls at Roundabout Theater Company, The Urban Retreat at the Public Theater, and Fefu and Her Friends at Theatre For A New Audience. Her film and television credits include Law & Order, The Good Wife, Elementary, Hell on Wheels, Instinct, Impossible Monsters, Jessica Jones, High Maintenance, and Prodigal Son. She will appear in the forthcoming films Irresistible, Naked Singularity, and The Stand-In.

Mary-Louise Parker starred on Showtime’s hit television series Weeds, for which she received several nominations and a Golden Globe for Best Actress. She made her Broadway debut with Prelude to a Kiss, for which she won the Theatre World Award, the Clarence Derwent Award, and received her first Tony nomination. Her Broadway credits include her Tony Award-winning performances in Proof and The Sound Inside, as well as memorable roles in Bus Stop, Hedda Gabler, Reckless, and How I Learned to Drive. Parker’s many film and television credits include Red, Howl, The Five Senses, Let the Devil Wear Black, The Spiderwick Chronicles,Fried Green Tomatoes, The Blacklist, Red Sparrow, and HBO’s Angels in America, for which she received both a Golden Globe and Emmy Award for Best Supporting Actress. Her upcoming projects include Seneca - On The Creation of Earthquakes.

Lois Smith is an actress whose film career began with East of Eden and includes Fried Green Tomatoes, Dead Man Walking, Twister, Minority Report, Lady Bird, Uncle Frank, The French Dispatch, and The Gettysburg Address. Recent television credits include Grace and Frankie, Younger, Sneaky Pete, The Son, On Becoming a God in Central Florida, and Ray Donovan. Smith is a member of the Steppenwolf Theatre Company. She was inducted into the American Theatre Hall of Fame, and in 2013, was honored with a Lifetime Achievement Obie Award for excellence in Off-Broadway Performances. Additionally, Smith has been honored with Drama Desk, Lucille Lortel, and Outer Critics Circle awards and the 2021 Tony Award for Best Supporting Actress for The Inheritance.

Julia Wallace is an American writer and editor living in Phnom Penh, Cambodia. She reports on politics, culture, religion, and human rights for international print and online media. She has contributed to The New York Times, The Atlantic, Salon, The Cambodia Daily, and many other publications. Wallace is the recipient of two Human Rights Press awards, as well as a 2016 Society of Publishers in Asia Award.

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

“(She Owns) Everything” by Anne Enright. First appeared in ThePortable Virgin, published in 1991 by Secker &Warburg. Copyright © 1991, 2008 by Anne Enright. Used by permission of the Melanie Jackson Agency.

“Clothes on the Ground: A Conversation with Leap” was first published in Women in Clothes edited by Sheila Heti, Heidi Julavits, and Leanne Shapton (2014,Blue Rider Press), and is used by permission of the authors, editors, and Penguin Random House.

“Faith and Hope Go Shopping” from Jigs & Reels by Joanne Harris. Copyright © Joanne Harris.

Used by permission of the author c/o Rogers, Coleridge & White Ltd., 20 Powis Mews, London W11 1JN.