Kathryn Erbe is known for her work on Law & Order: Criminal Intent and Oz. Additional television credits include City on a Hill, American Experience, The Good Fight, The Sinner, How to Get Away with Murder, Instinct, and Pose. Her film credits include The Good House, Stir of Echoes, What About Bob, and Assassination Nation. As a member of the Steppenwolf Theater Company, Erbe has appeared in many productions, including The Grapes of Wrath, Curse of the Starving Class, and A Streetcar Named Desire. She is also a member of the Atlantic Theater Company. Erbe was nominated for a Tony Award for her work in The Speed of Darkness and recently appeared in Something Clean. Additional theater credits include Ode to Joy, The Father, Antigone in Ferguson, and Natural Affection.

Fred Hechinger made his film debut in Eighth Grade and subsequently has gone on to be seen in Alex Strangelove, Human Capital, The Woman in the Window, Fear Street, Two Against Nature, News of the World, The Underground Railroad, Italian Studies, Fear Street, The White Lotus, Pam & Tommy, Butcher's Crossing, and The Pale Blue Eye. He attended the Thalia Kids’ Book Club Camp at Symphony Space for six years and came back as a counselor for one summer. His forthcoming projects include The Nickel Boys, Thelma, Kraven the Hunter, and Hell of a Summer.

Richard Kind began his career in Chicago with the Practical Theatre Company. He has appeared on Broadway in The Producers, Dirty Rotten Scoundrels, and The Big Knife, for which he received a Drama Desk Award. His film credits include Argo, A Serious Man, All We Had, The Paper Store, The Visitor, The Station Agent, and Bombshell, as well as voicing characters in A Bug’s Life, Cars, and Inside Out. His television appearances include starring roles on Spin City and Mad About You, as well as Curb Your Enthusiasm, Gotham, I’m Dying Up Here, Burn Notice, Big Mouth, Luck, Red Oaks, The Other Two, and Brockmire, among others. Kind can currently be seen in East New York, History of the World: Part II, and the upcoming Ari Aster film Beau Is Afraid.

As an Emmy, Golden Globe, and Screen Actors Guild award winner, Julianna Margulies has achieved success in television, theater, and film. Margulies starred as Alicia Florrick on the long-running hit CBS show The Good Wife, which she also produced, and is also well known for her role as one of the original cast members of ER. More recently, Margulies has starred in critically acclaimed series' including The Morning Show, Billions, and The Hot Zone. She has been involved with Project ALS and Erin’s Law and is also a board member of the New York City–based MCC Theater company. Her memoir, Sunshine Girl, was published in 2021.

Karen Pittman is best known for featured roles on And Just Like That..., The Morning Show, The Americans, Marvel’s Luke Cage, Yellowstone, Living with Yourself, and Homeland. Her numerous stage credits include Ayad Akhtar’s Pulitzer Prize–winning play Disgraced, for which she received the 2015 Theatre World Award, and Pipeline, for which she was nominated for Lucille Lortel and Broadway League’s Distinguished Performance awards. Pittman recently starred in the films What We Do Next and Unthinkably Good Things.

Elizabeth Strout is the #1 New York Times' bestselling author of Olive Kitteridge, winner of the Pulitzer Prize; Olive, Again, an Oprah’s Book Club pick; Anything Is Possible, winner of the Story Prize; My Name Is Lucy Barton, longlisted for the Man Booker Prize; The Burgess Boys, named one of the best books of 2013 by The Washington Post and NPR; Abide with Me, a national bestseller; Amy and Isabelle, winner of The Los Angeles Times' Art Seidenbaum Award for First Fiction and the Chicago Tribune Heartland Prize; Oh William!, shortlisted for the 2022 Booker Prize; and Lucy by the Sea, shortlisted for the Rathbones Folio Prize. Strout was inducted into The American Academy of Arts and Letters in May 2022.

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 into a 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, most 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.

Melissa Bank (1960-2022) was the author of two bestselling books, The Girls’ Guide to Hunting and Fishing and The Wonder Spot, and won the 1993 Nelson Algren Award for short fiction. Her work has been translated into 33 languages, and two stories from Girls’ Guide were adapted into a 2007 movie starring Alec Baldwin and Sarah Michelle Gellar, titled Suburban Girl. Bank attended Hobart and William Smith Colleges and had an MFA from Cornell University. She taught in the MFA program at Stony Brook Southampton.

Raphael Bob-Waksberg is the creator and executive producer of the Netflix series BoJack Horseman. His first collection of short stories, Someone Who Will Love You in All Your Damaged Glory, was published in 2019.

Danielle Henderson is a TV writer, with credits including Maniac, Divorce, and Dare Me. Her writing has appeared in The Cut, Vulture, Esquire, Cosmopolitan, and Elle. Her memoir, The Ugly Cry, was published by Viking in June 2021.

J. Robert Lennon is the author of nine novels, including Familiar, Broken River, and Subdivision, and the story collections Pieces for the Left Hand, See You in Paradise, and Let Me Think. He teaches creative writing at Cornell University.

William Trevor (1928-2016) was born in Mitchelstown, County Cork. He was the author of many novels and won many prizes, including the Hawthornden Prize, the Yorkshire Post Book of the Year Award, and the Whitbread Book of the Year Award. His novel Love and Summer was longlisted for the Booker Prize. He was also a renowned short story writer, and his two-volume Collected Stories was published by Viking Penguin in 2009. In 1999, Trevor received the prestigious David Cohen Literature Prize in recognition of a lifetime's literary achievement, and in 2002, he was knighted for his services to literature. In 2008, he received the Bob Hughes Lifetime Achievement Award in Irish Literature.