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. Her latest novel, I Am Homeless If This is Not My Home, was published this month.

James Naughton has won Tony Awards as Best Actor in a Musical for City of Angels and Chicago. On Broadway, he directed the Tony-nominated productions of Arthur Miller’s The Price and Thornton Wilder’s Our Town, starring Paul Newman. He also directed the television production of Our Town for Showtime and Masterpiece Theatre. He has appeared in numerous films and television shows, including The Devil Wears Prada, Damages, The Paper Chase, Gossip Girl, Ally McBeal, Planet of the Apes, Hostages, Turks & Caicos, The Affair, The Tap, The Independents, The Romanoffs, The Accidental Wolf, and And Just Like That…. Naughton recently starred in On Golden Pond at the Ivoryton Playhouse.

Suzzy Roche is a singer/songwriter/performer/author and founding member of the beloved singing group The Roches. She has recorded over 17 albums, written music for television and film, and toured extensively for 30 years across the U.S. and Europe. She has been an associate member of the Wooster Group (the experimental theater group) for more than 20 years. Her children’s book, Want to Be in a Band?, was published in February 2013. Wayward Saints is her first novel and was a selection of the Spring 2012 B&N Discover Great New Writers Program. Her second novel, The Town Crazy, was published in August 2020.

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, 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.