Writers & Readers

Yetide Badaki is a Nigerian-born actress known for the Starz fantasy drama American Gods, as well as appearances on Lost, Touch, Criminal Minds, Masters of Sex, This Is Us, Star Trek: Strange New Worlds, and Twilight of the Gods. She will be executive producing and starring as the title role in Queen Nzinga on Starz. As a theater actress in Chicago, Badaki won acclaim for her performances at the Victory Gardens Theater and Steppenwolf. She won Best Actress for her role in the film Precipice at the Indie Short Fest. Her film credits include RISE, Cardinal X, A Chance of Rain, What We Found, and Run Fast. Upcoming projects include Army of the Dead: Lost Vegas and Naija Vamp.

Billy Collins is the former Poet Laureate of the United States. He is the author of numerous collections of poetry, including the bestsellers Aimless Love, The Trouble with Poetry, Sailing Alone Around the Room, and Musical Tables. He is also the editor of Poetry 180, 180 More, and Bright Wings. A former Distinguished Professor at Lehman College of the City University of New York, Collins served as New York State Poet from 2004 to 2006. In 2016 he was inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Letters. His latest poetry collection, Water, Water, was released in 2024.

Tess Gallagher, the author of eleven books of poetry, lives and writes in her hometown of Port Angeles, Washington, and in her cottage in County Sligo, Ireland. She received a Lifetime Achievement Award for her poetry from the Foundation of Rome in 2023. She is the only American to have been so honored. Her most recent poetry collection is Is, Is Not, published by Graywolf Press. Gallagher participated in Birdman and Shorts Cuts, films centered on the work of her late husband Raymond Carver’s stories. Her own collection, The Man from Kinvara: Selected Stories, published in 2009, is the basis for film episodes in development. She is the first Writer-in-Residence for Field Hall Arts and Events Center. The first biennial Raymond Carver and Tess Gallagher Creative Writing Festival took place in 2024, in Port Angeles.

Dion Graham, from HBO’s The Wire, also narrates The First 48 on A&E. An award-winning and critically acclaimed actor and narrator, his film and television credits include The Blacklist, Madam Secretary, the Law & Order franchise, and Malcolm X, as well as voice work with the Star Wars video game franchise, The Atlanta Child Murders, Art of the Heist, and American Experience on PBS. Graham’s extensive stage credits include performances at the Roundabout; Circle in the Square; Lincoln Center; The Kennedy Center in Washington, DC; the Edinburgh International Festival; The Royal National Theater in London; and on Broadway. His performances have been praised as thoughtful and compelling, vivid and full of life.

Tony Hale is a three-time Emmy award–winning actor known for his work on Arrested Development, Veep, Being the Ricardos, The Mysterious Benedict Society, Hocus Pocus 2, Toy Story 4, and Inside Out 2. Recent credits include Netflix’s limited series The Decameron and Woman of the Hour, and he can be heard in the animated series Dream Productions and Megamind Rules!. Hale also starred and produced his first feature film, Sketch, which premiered at the Toronto Film Festival this past September. Hale can be seen in the forthcoming films Opus, released in March 2025, and The Wrong Girls, alongside Seth Rogen and Kristen Stewart.

N. K. Jemisin is an award-winning science fiction and fantasy author whose works include the novels The World We Make, The City We Became, The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms, The Killing Moon, The Fifth Season, The Obelisk Gate, The Stone Sky, and the short story collection How Long ’Til Black Future Month? Jemisin is the first author to win three consecutive Hugo Awards, as well as the Locus and Nebula awards. Her fiction has appeared in Clarkesworld, Tor.com, Weird Tales, WIRED, Helix, Strange Horizons, Popular Science, and TheNew York Times Book Review, among other publications.

Ian McEwan’s works have earned him worldwide critical acclaim. He won the Somerset Maugham Award for his collection First Love, Last Rites; the Whitbread Novel Award and the Prix Fémina Etranger for The Child in Time; and the Man Booker Prize for Amsterdam, among other honors. His novel Atonement was made into an Oscar-winning film. McEwan was awarded the Bodleian Meda and a Commander of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire. His latest novel, What We Can Know, will be published in September 2025.

Kirsten Vangsness is best known for playing the bespectacled tech kitten Penelope Garcia on Criminal Minds, which is on its 18th season for Paramount+ and as Bigelow McFigglehorn on the new Wizards Beyond Waverly Place on Disney. Kirsten has just penned her third solo piece, Outdated, which will be opening in 2025. She is the creator and host of the YouTube show Kirsten’s Agenda and of BITS, a monthly community performance art salon at Theatre of Note in Hollywood. She LOVES reading for Selected Shorts.

Meg Wolitzer is the New York Times bestselling author of The Female Persuasion, The Interestings, The Ten-Year Nap, The Position, and The Wife. She is a faculty member in the Creative Writing and Literature Program at The Lichtenstein Center at Stony Brook University, where she co-founded and co-directs BookEnds, a one-year, non-credit intensive for emerging novelists. Wolitzer, who was the guest editor of The Best American Short Stories 2017, is the radio and podcast host of Symphony Space’s Selected Shorts.

CREDITS

“Books,” by Billy Collins, as published in Poetry magazine (April 1988). Copyright © 1988 by Billy Collins. Used by permission of the Chris Calhoun Agency.

“Dear Reader,” by Billy Collins, as published in Poetry magazine (January 1994). Copyright © 1994 by Billy Collins. Used by permission of the Chris Calhoun Agency.

“Henosis,” by N.K. Jemisin, from How Long ’til Black Future Month? (Orbit Books, 2018). Copyright © 2018 by N. K. Jemisin. Used by permission of the author.

“Mr. Woodriff’s Neckties,” by Tess Gallagher, from At the Owl Woman Saloon (Scribner, 1997). Copyright © 1997 by Tess Gallagher. Used by permission of The Wylie Agency, LLC.

“My Purple Scented Novel,” by Ian McEwan. Published by The New Yorker, 2016. Copyright © 2016 by Ian McEwan. Reproduced by permission of the author c/o Rogers, Coleridge & White Ltd., 20 Powis Mews, London W11 1JN.