Didn't See It Coming

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.

Stephen Colbert currently hosts the Emmy and Peabody Award–winning, #1 show in late night, The Late Show with Stephen Colbert. He previously hosted The Colbert Report on Comedy Central, following his work as a correspondent on The Daily Show. The Report received two Peabody Awards, two Grammy Awards, and five Emmy Awards. Colbert also served as Executive Producer on the Comedy Central series Stephen Colbert Presents Tooning Out the News and Hell of a Week with Charlamagne tha God, Showtime’s Our Cartoon President, and Derek DelGaudio's In & Of Itself on Hulu. Colbert has authored numerous books, including Whose Boat Is This Boat?, for which all proceeds benefited the victims of Hurricane Florence and Michael, and COVID-19 relief; Stephen Colbert's America: Or Die Trying; and, with his wife Evie, Does This Taste Funny?: Recipes Our Family Loves, which was published in September.

Laurine Towler made her Broadway debut in Lettice and Lovage with Dame Maggie Smith, and appeared in the national tour with Julie Harris. She also toured nationally with The Tap Dance Kid. Her film and television credits include Woody Allen’s Celebrity and Small Time Crooks, People I Know with Al Pacino, Uptown Girls, Law & Order: SVU, Molly Gunn, The Sopranos, St. Elsewhere, and Brother to Brother. Towler is a social justice activist and has been a teaching artist with Morningside Center, Lincoln Center, The Roundabout Theatre Company, and Symphony Space.

Brenda Williams is the author of several short stories and poems. She was born in London and began writing poetry at the age of 11, studied English literature at Yale University, and completed her M.F.A. in creative writing at Columbia University. She served as director of the Brooklyn-based John Oliver Killens Beginning/Intermediate Adult Writing program, and as a fiction instructor for the Gotham Writers Workshop.

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

“Agouti” by Brenda Williams. First published in Essence (March 1994). Copyright © 1994 by Brenda Williams.

“The Veldt” by Ray Bradbury. Copyright © 1950 by the Curtis Publishing Company, renewed 1977 by Ray Bradbury. Published in The Illustrated Man, available from Bantam Books and Harper Collins. Recorded with the permission of Don Congdon Associates, Inc.