Beyond Leprechauns

Elizabeth Crane is the author of several short-story collections, including Turf and When the Messenger Is Hot, which was adapted for the stage by Chicago’s Steppenwolf Theater Company, as well as the novels The History of Great Things and We Only Know So Much, which was adapted into a feature film. Crane teaches in the UCR–Palm Desert low-residency MFA program. Her memoir, This Story Will Change, was released by Counterpoint Books in August 2022.

Maddie Corman has appeared on Broadway in Next Fall and Picnic, at Lincoln Center in Babylon Line, and off-Broadway in Appropriate. Her film and television credits include A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood, Mr. President, All American Girl, Almost There, the Law & Order franchise, Curb Your Enthusiasm, Younger,Bull, The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, and High Maintenance, among others. Corman wrote, directed, and starred in the short film How Was Your Day, which was selected by Tribeca Film Fest for their “Watch This” series. For her one-woman play, Accidentally Brave, she was nominated for the Outer Critics Circle award and won the Off Broadway Alliance Award for best solo performance.

Zina Goldrich is an award-winning composer, conductor, musical director, and performing artist. Her musical Ever After with longtime collaborator Marcy Heisler has enjoyed productions at the Alliance Theatre and Paper Mill Playhouse, and is gearing up for another production. She recently wrote Yay People Yay! with multi-Emmy award winner David Javerbaum. Previous musicals include The Great American Mousical directed by Julie Andrews, Junie B. Jones, and Dear Edwina. Zina has composed for Walt Disney Feature Animation, The Kennedy Center Honors, Nickelodeon, ABC, NBC, and PBS. As a musician, Broadway credits include Avenue Q, Titanic, Oklahoma, and Grand Hotel, among others. Goldrich studied with legendary Oscar winner Jerry Goldsmith and is a graduate of the USC Scoring for Motion Picture and Television program.

Marcy Heisler is a bookwriter/lyricist, performer, author, and educator. Current collaborations with composer Zina Goldrich include Ever After; Breathe; Hollywood Romance; Dear Edwina; Snow White, Rose Red and Fred; Junie B Jones, The Musical; Junie B’s Essential Survival Guide to School; The Great American Mousical; and more. Additionally, she is working on Williamsburg with Tom Kitt, Jason Katims, and Hamilton producer Jeffrey Seller. She collaborated with Concord composer Georgia Stitt on Alphabet City Cycle and is co-lyricist of the podcast Little Did I Know with Doug Besterman and Dean Pitchford. Awards include the Kleban Prize for Lyrics, the Fred Ebb Award for Outstanding Songwriting, the ASCAP Rodgers and Hart Award, the ASCAP New Horizons Theatre Award, and the Seldes-Kanin Fellowship.

Heidi Latsky, a committed leader in the physically integrated dance field, formed her company in 2001. Venues have included: Joyce Theater, Whitney Museum, Cooper Hewitt, National Portrait Gallery, Kennedy Center, Lincoln Center. Latsky earned an Emmy nomination for a news feature on her show Gimp, and presented at TEDxWOMEN in DC. She was Head of the Movement department at the School for Film and Television, and on faculty at STEPS and American Dance Festival. In 2020, Latsky created the film Solo Flight for the 30th anniversary of the ADA. On Display, her live sculpture court series, is performed globally on December 3rd honoring the UN’s International Day of Persons with Disabilities. Latsky recently received the Martha Hill Fund Mid-Career Award.

Helen Phillips is the author of six books, including the novel The Need, which was a nominee for the 2019 National Book Award and a New York Times Notable Book of 2019. Her collection Some Possible Solutions received the John Gardner Fiction Book Award. Her novel The Beautiful Bureaucrat, a New York Times Notable Book of 2015, was a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize and the NYPL Young Lions Award. She is the recipient of a Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship and a Rona Jaffe Foundation Writers Award. Her work has appeared in the Atlantic and the New York Times. She is an associate professor at Brooklyn College. Her novel Hum is forthcoming from Marysue Rucci Books.

Dawn Akemi Saito is an actor, writer, director, and teacher whose credits include Insects in Heat, Suns Are Suns, Blood Cherries, HA, Knock on the Sky, Suicide Forest, Hiroshima Maiden, Arden/Ardennes, My House Is Collapsing Toward One Side, and Deshima. Her multi-disciplinary works have been performed at the Walker Art Center, Orpheum Theatre in Austria, the Whitney Museum, Dance Theater Workshop, New York Theater Workshop, LaMaMa, New World Theater, the Public Theater, and Aaron Davis Hall. Saito is an Associate Clinical Professor at Fordham University/Lincoln Center, is on the movement faculty at Juilliard, and serves as co-director of the Summer Theatre Devising Intensive at Bard College in Berlin, Germany.

Matt Scharfglass is an award-winning bassist and guitarist who has played with and recorded for numerous artists, performing all types of music in venues throughout NYC from Broadway to Madison Square Garden. He is a former Music Editor for Guitar World magazine, has authored over a dozen bass and guitar instructional books and videos, and is an accomplished arranger with more 1000 songs appearing in publications worldwide.

Miriam Shor starred in the hit series Younger, for which she received a Critics’ Choice nomination. Additional television credits include Mrs. America, The Americans (SAG nomination), High Maintenance, The Good Wife, GCB, Swingtown, Mildred Pierce, and Damages. On stage, Shor has starred in productions of Sweat; Merrily We Roll Along; Almost, Maine; Scarcity; The Wild Party; Dedication or the Stuff of Dreams; Boy; and Book of Days. She created the role of Yitzak in the Off-Broadway production of Hedwig and the Angry Inch and starred in the film adaptation (Screen Idol Award, Sundance Audience Award). Shor was most recently featured in the films The Midnight Sky, directed by George Clooney, and Lost Girls, directed by Oscar-nominee Liz Garbus.

Sarah Steele currently stars on CBS's The Good Fight. She has appeared in numerous films, television shows, on Broadway and off. She won an Independent Spirit Award for her ensemble work in Nicole Holofcener's Please Give and a Drama Desk for her ensemble work in Stephen Karam's The Humans. Steele graduated from Columbia University with a degree in English Literature and sometimes makes weird dances on Instagram.

Weike Wang is the author of the novels Chemistry and Joan Is Okay. Her work has appeared in Glimmer Train, Kenyon Review, Ploughshares, Alaska Quarterly Review, Redivider, and The New Yorker, among other publications, and her fiction has been anthologized in The Best American Short Stories and The O. Henry Prize Stories. She is the recipient of the 2018 Pen/Hemingway Award, a Whiting Award, and a National Book Foundation 5 Under 35 Prize.

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. She is excited to be the new host of the literary radio show and podcast Selected Shorts.

CREDITS

“Unicorn Me,” “The Double Life of the Cockroach’s Wife,” and “iPhoneSE” 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.