Fables and Fairy Tales

Artists and Writers:

Kelly Link is the author of the collections Stranger Things Happen, Magic for Beginners, Pretty Monsters, and Get in Trouble. Her short stories have been published in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, The Best American Short Stories, and Prize Stories: The O. Henry Awards. She has received a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts. She and Gavin J. Grant have co-edited a number of anthologies, including multiple volumes of The Year’s Best Fantasy and Horror and, for young adults, Steampunk! and Monstrous Affections. She is the co-founder of Small Beer Press and co-edits the occasional zine Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet.

Ben Loory is the author of Tales of Falling and Flying and Stories for Nighttime and Some for the Day, as well as a picture book for children, The Baseball Player and the Walrus. His fables and tales have appeared in The New Yorker, Tin House, Electric Literature, and The Sewanee Review, been anthologized in The New Voices of Fantasy and Year’s Best Weird Fiction, and been heard on This American Life and Selected Shorts. Loory is a graduate of Harvard University and holds an MFA in Screenwriting from the American Film Institute. He lives in Los Angeles and teaches short story writing at the UCLA Extension Writers’ Program.

W. Somerset Maugham (1874 - 1965) was born in Paris to British parents. Orphaned at age 8, he was raised by a clergyman uncle. His family was determined that he should go to Oxford to prepare for a career in the church. Instead he went to Heidelberg University, and then to medical school. Although he completed his medical training, he never practiced medicine. Maugham’s best known novels include Of Human Bondage, Cakesand Ale, Up at the Villa, The Moon and Sixpence, and The Razor’s Edge. He also wrote plays, literary criticism, autobiographies, essays, and short stories.

John Cameron Mitchell is the co-creator of Hedwig and the Angry Inch. He also directed the films Shortbus, Rabbit Hole and How to Talk to Girls at Parties. He's a cast member of the Hulu comedy series Shrill, starring Aidy Bryant. His world tour, The Origin of Love: the Songs and Stories of Hedwig, culminated in a performance at New York City’s Town Hall as part of the celebration of the 50th anniversary of the Stonewall riots. Most recently he launched his new musical Anthem: Homunculus, co-written with Bryan Weller and featuring himself, Glenn Close, Denis O'Hare, Patti Lupone, Cynthia Erivo, and Nakhane as a podcast series.

Maulik Pancholy is best known for his roles on the award-winning NBC comedy 30 Rock and on Showtime’s Weeds. Additional television credits include Whitney, Web Therapy, The Comeback, The Good Wife, Law & Order: Criminal Intent, The Sopranos, and the animated series Sanjay & Craig and Phineas & Ferb. He currently appears in Star Trek: Discovery. His film credits include 27 Dresses, Hitch, and Friends with Money, among others. He recently starred in It’s Only A Play on Broadway and has performed at The New Group, Culture Project, Samuel Beckett Theatre, and the Summer Play Festival at the Public Theatre. He appeared at the Williamstown Theatre Festival this past summer in Bess Whol’s Grand Horizons; the show opens in December at Second Stage Theater.

Josh Radnor is best known for his leading role on CBS’ Emmy-nominated series How I Met Your Mother. Following its nine-year run, he starred in the PBS Civil War drama Mercy Street and in the series Rise. As a filmmaker, he wrote, directed, and starred in happythankyoumoreplease and Liberal Arts, both of which premiered at the Sundance Film Festival to great acclaim, the former winning the 2010 Audience Award. Additional films include Social Animals, The Seeker, and Jill Soloway’s Afternoon Delight. Recent theater credits include the Broadway run of Ayad Akhtar’s Pulitzer-Prize winning drama Disgraced and the world premiere of Richard Greenberg’s The Babylon Line at Lincoln Center, as well as Little Shop of Horrors at The Kennedy Center. He also writes and records music with his friend Ben Lee as the duo Radnor & Lee. Radnor will appear in the forthcoming series The Hunt.

Kirsten Vangsness is best known for her role as Penelope Garcia on the CBS drama Criminal Minds. She is the executive producer and star of the film noir spoof Kill Me, Deadly, which can be found on Hulu and iTunes. She was nominated for Playwright of the Year by LA Weekly and is a company member of Hollywood’s Theatre of NOTE. Vangsness regularly performs her critically acclaimed one-person show Mess—about quantum theory and monsters—around Los Angeles. Mess is one of two shows Vangsness brought to the Edinburgh Fringe Festival in the summer of 2019; the other was Cleo, Theo & Wu. In her spare time she buses tables and washes dishes at the Blinking Owl Distillery in Santa Ana.