Ophira Eisenberg is a standup comedian, writer, and the host of the comedy podcast Parenting Is a Joke with iHeart Radio and Pretty Good Friends. She also hosted NPR’s Ask Me Another, where she interviewed hundreds of celebrities, including Sir Patrick Stewart, Rosie Perez, Yo-Yo Ma, Awkwafina, Roxane Gay, Nick Kroll, Chelsea Handler, and more. She’s appeared on Comedy Central, This Week at The Comedy Cellar, Kevin Hart’s LOL Network, HBO’s Girls, Gotham Live, The Late Late Show, The Today Show, and VH-1. Eisenberg is a regular host and teller on The Moth Radio Hour, and her stories are included in three of The Moth’s best-selling collections, including the most recent: How to Tell a Story: The Essential Guide to Memorable Storytelling from The Moth. Her memoir, Screw Everyone: Sleeping My Way to Monogamy, was optioned for a television series, and her most recent comedy special, Plant-Based Jokes, is streaming on YouTube.
Joanna Gleason won a Tony for her portrayal of the Baker’s Wife in Stephen Sondheim and James Lapine’s Into The Woods. Her other Broadway and off-Broadway credits include The Normal Heart; Dirty Rotten Scoundrels, for which she received a Tony nomination; I Love My Wife; Happiness; Joe Egg, for which she received a Tony nomination; Sons of the Prophet; and The Real Thing; to name only a few. Her television credits include The West Wing, The Newsroom, Love and War, Bette, and many more. Films include Hannah and Her Sisters, Boogie Nights, Crimes and Misdemeanors, The Skeleton Twins, and many more. She has written and directed two films: a short, Morning Into Night, which debuted at the Los Angeles International Short Film Festival and was selected for the Cambridge Film Festival; and a feature, The Grotto, which won the Best Narrative Feature premiere at the Heartland International Film Festival in 2022 and is now playing in select cities. She has been reading stories for Selected Shorts for more than 35 years.
Tony Hale is a two-time Emmy Award–winning actor known for his work on Arrested Development, Veep, The Mysterious Benedict Society, Being the Ricardos, Hocus Pocus 2, and Toy Story 4. Hale can currently be seen in Netflix’s limited series The Decameron, and recently produced his first feature, Sketch, which was released this September. He also co-wrote the children’s book Archibald’s Next Big Thing, which became an animated series on Netflix and Peacock.
Alexandra Petri is a humorist and columnist for TheWashington Post and author of Nothing Is Wrong and Here Is Why, a Thurber Prize finalist; Alexandra Petri’s US History: Important American Documents (I Made Up); and A Field Guide to Awkward Silences. Her satire has appeared in McSweeney’s and TheNew Yorker’s Daily Shouts and Murmurs.
Ben Philippe is a Haitian-Canadian author and television writer. His debut novel, The Field Guide to the North American Teenager, was honored with the 2020 William C. Morris Award. Also in 2020, Philippe published the novel Charming As a Verb, followed by the 2021 memoir Sure, I'll Be Your Black Friend, which was named one of Canada's best nonfiction books by CBC. His work has appeared in The New Yorker, Vanity Fair, and The Guardian, among others. In January 2022, Philippe was nominated for the Writers Guild of America Award for Television for his work on Only Murders in the Building.
George Saunders is the #1 New York Times bestselling author of eleven books, including A Swim in a Pond in the Rain; Lincoln in the Bardo, which won the Booker Prize; Congratulations, by the Way; Tenth of December, a finalist for the National Book Award and winner of the inaugural Folio Award; The Braindead Megaphone; and the critically acclaimed collections CivilWarLand in Bad Decline, Pastoralia, and In Persuasion Nation. He teaches in the creative writing program at Syracuse University. Saunders’ latest collection, Liberation Day, was published in 2022.
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
“Seneca Falls for You” and “John & Abigail Adams Try Sexting,” by Alexandra Petri, from Alexandra Petri’s US History: Important American Documents (I Made Up) (W. W. Norton & Company, 2023). Copyright © 2023 by Alexandra Petri. Used by permission of the author.
“The Luck of Others,” by Ben Philippe. Commissioned by Symphony Space. Copyright © 2023 by Ben Philippe and Symphony Space.
“Al Roosten,” by George Saunders, from Tenth of December (Random House, 2013). First published in The New Yorker (January 25, 2009). Copyright © 2009 by George Saunders. Used by permission of the author.
