Mike Birbiglia is an Emmy-nominated comedian and Sundance award–winning filmmaker who has performed his award-winning solo shows worldwide––from the Sydney Opera House to the West End of London to Broadway. His solo shows Sleepwalk With Me, My Girlfriend’s Boyfriend, Thank God For Jokes, The New One, and The Old Man & The Pool interweave storytelling and comedy. Birbiglia wrote and directed the films Sleepwalk with Me and Don’t Think Twice. He hosts the podcast Mike Birbiglia's Working It Out and just wrapped a new solo show at The Beacon Theater called The Good Life, which will premiere on Netflix May 26th.

J. Hope Stein is a poet and the author of Little Astronaut. Her work has been published in The New York Times, The New Yorker, and Poetry International. She is the co-author of The New One: Painfully True Stories from a Reluctant Dad with her husband, Mike Birbiglia.

Mahogany L. Browne, a Kennedy Center's Next 50 Fellow and MacDowell Arts Advocacy Awardee, is a writer, playwright, organizer, and educator. Browne has received fellowships from All Arts, Arts for Justice, Air Serenbe, Baldwin for the Arts, Cave Canem, Hawthornden, Poets House, Mellon Research, Rauschenberg, Wesleyan University, and UCross. Browne’s books include Vinyl Moon, Chlorine Sky, which was optioned by the Steppenwolf Theatre Company, Black Girl Magic, and banned books Woke: A Young Poet’s Call to Justice and Woke Baby. Founder of the diverse lit initiative Woke Baby Book Fair, Browne is currently touring with her latest work, Chrome Valley, which was highlighted in Publishers Weekly and The New York Times, and is the 2024 Paterson Poetry Prize winner. Browne holds an honorary Doctor of Philosophy degree awarded by Marymount Manhattan College and is the inaugural Poet-in-Residence at Lincoln Center.

Josh Radnor is an actor, writer, director, and musician. His recent television credits include Hunters on Amazon, opposite Al Pacino, and Fleishman Is in Trouble on F/X and Hulu. He is best known for his leading role on CBS’ Emmy-winning How I Met Your Mother. Additionally, he has been featured on Rise, Mercy Street, Centaurworld, Grey’s Anatomy, and Six Feet Under. Radnor wrote and directed two feature films: happythankyoumoreplease and Liberal Arts, both of which premiered at the Sundance Film Festival, the former winning the 2010 Audience Award. His additional film credits include Afternoon Delight directed by Joey Soloway, Social Animals, 3 Birthdays, and All Happy Families. His theater includes the world premiere of Itamar Moses’ The Ally at The Public Theater, Little Shop of Horrors at the Kennedy Center, Richard Greenberg’s The Babylon Line at Lincoln Center, and the Broadway production of Ayad Akhtar’s Pulitzer Prize–winning play, Disgraced. As a musician he made two albums with Aussie singer-songwriter Ben Lee as Radnor & Lee. Solo music: One More Then I’ll Let You Go and Eulogy: Volumes 1 and Volume 2. You can find his popular Museletters over on Substack.

Faith Salie is an Emmy award–winning journalist on CBS Sunday Morning and a regular panelist on NPR’s Wait Wait… Don’t Tell Me! Her Off-Broadway solo show, Approval Junkie, based on her memoir of the same title, was named one of Audible’s Best. Faith has been a storyteller for The Moth, with her story viewed more than 6 million times and also included in two of The Moth’s New York Times bestselling collections. She’s interviewed more than a thousand fascinating folks, ranging from Ryan Gosling to Joan Rivers, from Robert Redford to President Carter, and has been interviewed by Oprah and Anderson Cooper. Salie has hosted over a dozen podcasts for NPR, Wondery, and Slate, and her latest podcast is Audible’s Envy Enlightened, which will debut this spring. She has written for The New York Times; Time; USA Today; O, The Oprah Magazine; Slate; and McSweeney’s. Faith is also the only Rhodes Scholar who’s ever been beamed up on Star Trek and guest-starred on Sex and the City. She has swum with the Weeki Wachee mermaids, sung with the Boston Pops, and performed in sequins at Carnegie Hall.

Maggie Smith is the award-winning New York Times bestselling author of eight books of poetry and prose, including You Could Make This Place Beautiful, Good Bones, Goldenrod, Keep Moving, and My Thoughts Have Wings. A 2011 recipient of a Creative Writing Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts, Smith has also received a Pushcart Prize and numerous grants and awards from the Academy of American Poets, the Sustainable Arts Foundation, the Ohio Arts Council, the Greater Columbus Arts Council, and the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts. She has been widely published, appearing in The New Yorker, The Paris Review, The Nation, The New York Times, The Atlantic, The Best American Poetry, and more. Dear Writer will be published on April 1st.

Amber Tamblyn is the author of seven books across genres, including the critically acclaimed, bestselling Any Man and Listening in the Dark: Women Reclaiming the Power of Intuition. She is the creator of the popular Substack newsletter Listening in the Dark, an Emmy and Golden Globe–nominated actress, and an award-winning director. Her work has appeared in The New York Times, The New Yorker, New York Magazine, The Iowa Review, Poetry Foundation, and others.