Friendship!

Jane Curtin has appeared on Broadway in Noises Off, Candida, and Our Town. Her off-Broadway work includes Love Letters and the musical revue Pretzels, which she co-wrote. She starred in the television series 3rd Rock from the Sun and won back-to-back Emmy Awards for her role on Kate & Allie. She is an original cast member of Saturday Night Live and also starred in the television film series The Librarian and its spin-off, The Librarians. Her film credits include Coneheads; Antz; I Love You, Man; I Don’t Know How She Does It; The Heat; The Spy Who Dumped Me; Can You Ever Forgive Me?; Ode to Joy; Godmothered; Queen Bees; and Jules, opposite Sir Ben Kingsley. She starred on the television series Unforgettable and has had guest appearances on The Good Wife, 48 Hours ’til Monday, The Good Fight, Broad City, United We Fall, and Bupkis. Upcoming projects include the mini-series The Residence.

Jorge F. Hernández is a Mexican writer and essayist. He has published four novels, five short stories collections, and five essay collections. In 2000 he won the Efrén Hernández National Award for best short story. He is finishing his P.h.D. in the Complutense University in Madrid and was a teacher in universities across Mexico. His columns appear regularly in various newspapers and magazines such as Artes de México, Cambio, Matador, Vuelta, El País, Novedades, and Reforma.

Jane Kaczmarek is best known for her role as Lois on Malcolm in the Middle, for which she received 7 consecutive Emmy nominations as well as nominations for the Golden Globe and SAG Awards. A graduate of the University of Wisconsin and Yale School of Drama, Kaczmarek made her television debut on The Paper Chase and Hill Street Blues. On stage, she has appeared on Broadway and off, and for 6 seasons at the Williamstown Theatre Festival. Her recent theater credits include Long Day's Journey Into Night with Alfred Molina and Our Town with Deaf West Theatre. Kaczmarek’s favorite job is raising her three kids and reading/hosting Selected Shorts across America.

Anthony Marra is the New York Times bestselling author of The Tsar of Love and Techno; A Constellation of Vital Phenomena, winner of the National Book Critics Circle’s John Leonard Prize and the Anisfield-Wolf Book Award in Fiction, and longlisted for the National Book Award; and Mercury Pictures Presents, which won the 2022 Langham Prize for American Historical Fiction. Marra has contributed pieces to The Atlantic, Granta, The Rumpus, The New York Times, The Washington Post, and others.

Kelly Stout has been writing humor pieces for The New Yorker since 2014. Her writing has also been featured in Esquire, Jezebel, Deadspin, and The Awl. She was the Articles Director for Esquire from 2019 – 2024.

John Turturro is an actor and director whose notable film credits include Do the Right Thing; Barton Fink; Quiz Show; The Big Lebowski; The Truce; O Brother, Where Art Thou?; Mia Madre; The Batman; Guillermo del Toro's Pinocchio; Bless Me Father; and The Cut. He is the director of six films, including Mac, which was honored with the Caméra d’Or at the 1992 Cannes Film Festival, and most recently, The Jesus Rolls. On stage, he has appeared in Danny and the Deep Blue Sea, for which was awarded an Obie, Italian-American Reconciliation, La Puta Vida, The Bald Soprano, Steel on Steel, The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui, End Game, The Cherry Orchard, and most recently, Sabbath’s Theater. Turturro is also known for his television roles on Monk, for which he won an Emmy, The Night Of, The Bronx Is Burning, The Name of the Rose, The Plot Against America, and Mr. & Mrs. Smith. He currently stars in the critically acclaimed Apple TV+ series Severance, for which he was nominated for an Emmy Award. Turturro served as an executive producer for the forthcoming film When the Music Changes.

Michael Urie currently stars in the critically acclaimed Apple TV+ series Shrinking alongside Jason Segel and Harrison Ford, and can be seen on stage at Los Angeles’s Ahmanson Theatre in Once Upon a Mattress, which recently concluded its Broadway run at the Hudson Theatre. Elsewhere on stage, he starred in the off-Broadway one-man show Buyer & Cellar, for which he received the Lucille Lortel, Drama Desk, LA Theatre Critics, and the Clarence Derwent Awards, and The Temperamentals, for which he received the Lucille Lortel Award for Outstanding Lead Actor. Additional stage credits include How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying, Angels in America, Torch Song, Grand Horizons, Chicken and Biscuits, Spamalot, and Jersey Boys LIVE opposite Nick Jonas. On television, he is known for the role of Marc St. James on Ugly Betty, and has appeared on Modern Family, The Good Wife, Hot in Cleveland, Workaholics, The Good Fight, Younger, and Almost Family, as well as voice acting in Krapopolis. His film credits include Goodrich, Maestro, Single All the Way, and Swan Song. Urie co-directed the documentary Thank You for Judging, directed the film He’s Way More Famous Than You and the Web series What’s Your Emergency, and served as the co-host of Cocktails & Classics on Logo TV.

Meg Wolitzer is the New York Times bestselling author of The Female Persuasion, The Interestings, The Ten-Year Nap, The Position, and The Wife. She is a faculty member in the Creative Writing and Literature Program at The Lichtenstein Center at Stony Brook University, where she co-founded and co-directs BookEnds, a one-year, non-credit intensive for emerging novelists. Wolitzer, who was the guest editor of The Best American Short Stories 2017, is the radio and podcast host of Symphony Space’s Selected Shorts.

CREDITS

“Let's Get Drinks” by Kelly Stout, from The New Yorker (January, 2015). Copyright © 2015 by Kelly Stout. Used by permission of the author.

“The Last Words Of Benito Picone” by Anthony Marra, originally published in ZYZZYVA (August 2015). Copyright © 2015 by Anthony Marra. Used by permission of the author.

“True Friendship” by Jorge F. Hernández, translated by Jorge F. Hernández and Anita Sagástegui, from The Best of Contemporary Mexican Fiction (Dalkey Archive Press-UNAM, 2009). Copyright © Jorge F. Hernández. Used by permission of the author.