What's Your Story?

Joan Allen began her New York career off-Broadway in a production of And a Nightingale Sang. Her Broadway credits include Burn This, for which she received a Tony Award for Best Actress, The Heidi Chronicles, Impressionism, and most recently, The Waverly Gallery. She is an original member of Chicago's Steppenwolf Theatre Company, where she has appeared in more than 25 productions, including Balm in Gilead and The Wheel. Allen is a three-time Academy Award nominee, receiving Best Supporting Actress nominations forNixon andThe Crucible, and a Best Actress nomination forThe Contender. Additional film credits include Pleasantville, Face/Off, The Notebook, The Ice Storm, The Upside of Anger, The Bourne Identity series, and Room. On television, she is known for her portrayal of Georgia O’Keefe in the 2009 biopic of the same name, and she has had recurring roles in Luck, The Killing, The Family, and the recent Apple TV miniseries Lisey’s Story.

Alex Karpovsky is an actor and filmmaker. He wrote and directed The Hole Story, which earned him a slot in Filmmaker magazine’s 25 New Faces of Independent Films; Woodpecker; Trust Us; This Is All Made Up; Rubberneck; and Red Flag. As an actor, he played the role of Ray in the HBO comedy series Girls, and has appeared in Inside Llewyn Davis; 7 Chinese Brothers; Happy Baby; Fits and Starts; Girlfriend’s Day, the Coen brothers’ film, Hail, Caesar!; Homecoming; and the recent TV miniseries Angelyne.

Etgar Keret was born in Ramat Gan and now lives in Tel Aviv. A recipient of the French Chevalier des Arts et des Lettres, the Charles Bronfman Prize, and the Caméra d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival, he is the author of the memoir The Seven Good Years and story collections including Fly Already; The Bus Driver Who Wanted to Be God; The Nimrod Flipout; and Suddenly, a Knock on the Door. His work has been translated into over forty-five languages and appeared in TheNew Yorker, the Wall Street Journal, Paris Review, and TheNew York Times, among other publications.

Kyle MacLachlan is best known for his leading role as Special Agent Dale Cooper in Twin Peaks, for which he won a Golden Globe Award, as well as its prequel Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me and the 2017 limited series revival. His film and television credits include Dune, Blue Velvet, Sex and the City, Desperate Housewives, How I Met Your Mother, The Good Wife, Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., Inside Out, Portlandia, Giant Little Ones, The House with a Clock in Its Walls, and Atlantic Crossing. He will soon appear in the film Miranda’s Victim and the television series Fallout. MacLachlan is also a winemaker, producing in the Walla Walla region of Washington State under the label Pursued by Bear.

Aasif Mandvi is an actor, writer, and comedian who stars on the hit series Evil, which is currently streaming on Paramount+. He was a correspondent on Comedy Central's The Daily Show with Jon Stewart and starred on HBO's The Brink, for which he also served as a writer and producer. He won an OBIE Award for his critically acclaimed play Sakina’s Restaurant, which was adapted into the film Today's Special. His numerous theater credits include the Pulitzer Prize-winning Disgraced at Lincoln Center. Additional film and television credits include Jericho; Margin Call; Gods Behaving Badly; Million Dollar Arm; The Brink; Younger; Shut Eye; A Series of Unfortunate Events; Blue Bloods; Human Capital; This Way Up; Room 104; Mira, Royal Detective; and Halal in the Family.

Lorrie Moore is the author of the story collections Like Life, Self-Help, Birds of America, and most recently, Bark. She is also the author of the novels Who Will Run the Frog Hospital?, Anagrams, and A Gate at the Stairs, which was shortlisted for the Orange Prize for Fiction and the PEN/Faulkner Award. Moore has contributed to The New Yorker and The New York Review of Books. Her work has been honored with the Irish Times International Prize for Literature, a Lannan Foundation fellowship, the PEN/Malamud Award, and the Rea Award. Moore is currently the Gertrude Conaway Vanderbilt Professor of English at Vanderbilt University. Her most recent work, the essay collection See What Can Be Done, was published in 2018.

B.J. Novak is a writer and actor best known for his work on NBC’s Emmy Award-winning comedy series The Office as an actor, writer, director, and executive producer. He is also known for his standup comedy performances and roles in films such as Inglourious Basterds, Saving Mr. Banks, The Amazing Spider-Man 2, and The Founder. He is the author of One More Thing: Stories and Other Stories and The Book with No Pictures. Novak is the creator of FX’s The Premise. He made his directorial debut with the film Vengeance, which is currently in theaters.

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

“Great Writers Steal” from One More Thing: Stories and Other Stories by B.J Novak (Knopf 2014). Copyright (c) 2014 by B.J. Novak. Used by permission of the author and Alfred A. Knopf, an imprint of the Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, a division of Random House LLC.

“Creative Writing” from Suddenly, A Knock On The Door by Etgar Keret, translated by several translators. English translation copyright © 2012 by Etgar Keret. Used by permission of Farrar, Straus and Giroux. All Rights Reserved.

“Foes” by Lorrie Moore. From BARK, published by Vintage/Knopf in print & ebook, and by Blackstone Publishing in audio. Copyright © 2014 by Lorrie Moore. Performed with permission by Melanie Jackson Agency, LLC.