Best Laid Plans

Michael Arthur is a pen-and-ink artist whose work lives at the intersection of performance and visual art. He was the archival artist at Joe’s Pub, Drama Department, and LaJolla Playhouse, and his Sketchbook Reports have appeared on line at The New Yorker, Vanity Fair, NPR, and The New York Times. He has performed Live Drawing at the Joyce Theatre, Joe’s Pub, Jazz at Lincoln Center, Symphony Space, Mass MoCA, and The Bowery Presents, among others, accompanying artists such as The Sun Ra Arkestra, Wesley Stace’s Cabinet of Wonders, David Byrne, Nicole Atkins, and Toshi Reagon. He has also created music videos from his drawings for Josh Ritter, Paul Brill, Peter Salett, and many more.

In a career spanning more than seventy years, Ray Bradbury (1920 - 2012) inspired generations of readers to dream, think, and create. A prolific author of hundreds of short stories and close to fifty books, as well as numerous poems, essays, operas, plays, teleplays, and screenplays, Bradbury was one of the most celebrated writers of our time. His groundbreaking works include Fahrenheit 451, The Martian Chronicles, The Illustrated Man, Dandelion Wine, and Something Wicked This Way Comes. He wrote the screenplay for John Huston's classic film adaptation of Moby Dick and was nominated for an Academy Award. He adapted sixty-five of his stories for television's The Ray Bradbury Theater and won an Emmy for his teleplay of The Halloween Tree. Bradbury was the recipient of the 2000 National Book Foundation Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters, the 2004 National Medal of Arts, and the 2007 Pulitzer Prize Special Citation, among many honors.

Wyatt Cenac is an Emmy Award–winning comedian, actor, producer, and writer known for the HBO late-night comedy docuseries Wyatt Cenac’s Problem Areas. Additional credits include aka Wyatt Cenac,People of the Earth, and The Daily Show with Jon Stewart. He's made four comedy albums: Wyatt Cenac: Comedy Person, the Grammy nominated Brooklyn, Furry Dumb Fighter, and One Angry Night in November, and hosted the televised stand-up variety series Night Train with Wyatt Cenac. He started his career in animation as a writer for Mike Judge's King of the Hill, and has served as a consultant for South Park. Every now and again he pops up in a film, most notably Barry Jenkins’ Medicine for Melancholy. Cenac wrote and produced the animated special Did I Do That to the Holidays? A Steve Urkel Story and Urkel Saves Santa! The Movie.

Edwidge Danticat is the author of several books, including Breath, Eyes, Memory, an Oprah's Book Club selection; Krik? Krak!, a National Book Award finalist; The Farming of Bones, an American Book Award winner; and the novel-in-stories, The Dew Breaker. She is the editor of The Butterfly’s Way: Voices from the Haitian Diaspora in the United States and The Beacon Best of 2000: Great Writing by Men and Women of All Colors and Cultures, Haiti Noir and Haiti Noir 2, and Best American Essays 2011. Shehas written several books for young adults and children―Anacaona, Behind the Mountains, Eight Days, The Last Mapou, Mama's Nightingale, and Untwine―as well as a travel narrative, After the Dance, A Walk Through Carnival in Jacmel. Her memoir, Brother, I’m Dying, was a 2007 finalist for the National Book Award and a 2008 winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award for autobiography. She is a 2009 MacArthur Fellow. Her collection of essays, We’re Alone, will be published in September.

Tate Donovan has appeared in more than 45 films, including The Holdovers, Respect, Worth, Rocketman, The Upside, Manchester by the Sea, Argo, Good Night and Good Luck, Memphis Belle, Ethan Frome, Love Potion #9, Clean and Sober, and the title voice in Disney’s Hercules. His television credits include, The Man in the High Castle, 24, Damages, The OC, and Friends. Donovan has appeared on Broadway in the Tony Award–winning productions of Good People, Amy’s View, and Picnic. He has also directed several episodes of Madam Secretary, Damages, Glee, Weeds, Gossip Girl, Nip/Tuck, The OC, and Bloodline, as well as the ESPN documentary Arthur and Johnnie, for which he won an Emmy.

Ben Loory is the author of the collections Tales of Falling and Flying and Stories for Nighttime and Some for the Day, both from Penguin Books. His fables and tales have appeared in TheNew Yorker, BOMB Magazine, Fairy Tale Review, and A Public Space; been anthologized in The New Voices of Fantasy and Year’s Best Weird Fiction; and heard on This American Life. He is also the author of a picture book for children, The Baseball Player and the Walrus. Loory lives and teaches short story writing in Los Angeles.

Tony Award winner Anika Noni Rose most recently starred in the Lincoln Center production of Uncle Vanya. She drew notice for her role in Netflix’s Maid, which resulted in an NAACP Image Award nomination. She has also appeared in Let the Right One In, Jingle Jangle: A Christmas Journey; Them: Covenant; Little Fires Everywhere; The Quad; Roots; Assassination Nation; Everything, Everything; and Dreamgirls. Rose made history voicing Princess Tiana, the first Black Disney Princess, in The Princess and The Frog. The film received three Oscar nominations, and Rose became the youngest Disney Legend inductee. Theater Credits include Caroline, or Change; Carmen Jones; A Raisin in the Sun, for which she received a Tony nomination; Cat On A Hot Tin Roof; and Footloose. Rose will voice the role of Afia in the forthcoming Disney feature Mufasa: The Lion King.

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.

CREDITS

“Dandelions” and “Cane and Roses” were commissioned by Symphony Space for the collection Small Odysseys: Selected Shorts Presents 35 New Stories, edited by Hannah Tinti, published by Algonquin Books. © 2022 by Symphony Space.

“The Laurel and Hardy Love Affair” by Ray Bradbury, first published in Playboy. Copyright © 1987 by Ray Bradbury. Used by permission of Don Congdon Associates, Inc.