Handle with Care

Becca Blackwell has collaborated with Young Jean Lee, Half Straddle, Jennifer Miller's Circus Amok, Richard Maxwell, Erin Markey, Sharon Hayes, Theater of the Two Headed Calf, Lisa D'Amour, and more. Film and television credits include High Maintenance, Ramy, Marriage Story, Shameless, Deadman's Barstool, Jack in the Box, If Found, Sort Of, She’s Clean, You Can’t Stay Here, BROS, and Survival of the Thickest. Their solo shows, They, Themself and Schmerm and Schmermie's Choice, have toured across the US. Blackwell was a recipient of the Doris Duke Impact Artist Award, the Franklin Furnace Award, and the Creative Capital Award. They recently made their Broadway debut in Is This a Room and have a new one-person show, Back to She.

Brian Doyle (1956 – 2017) was an award-winning author who served as the editor of Portland Magazine at the University of Portland in Oregon from 1991 to 2017. Doyle wrote many books of fiction, essays, and poems, including A Book of Uncommon Prayer, which was named “A Best Spiritual Book of the Year” by Spirituality & Practice. His novels include Mink River, The Plover, Chicago, and Martin Marten, for which he won a 2016 Oregon Book Award for Young Adult Literature. Additional honors include a number of book awards from the Catholic Press Association, the Christopher Medal, three Pushcart Prizes, the University of Notre Dame’s Griffin Award in literature, the Award in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the Foreword Review's Novel of the Year award, the John Burroughs Award for Nature Essays, and the 2017 John Burroughs Medal for Distinguished Nature Writing for his novel Martin Marten, only the second work of fiction to be awarded the Medal in its 90-year history.

John Cameron Mitchell is the co-creator of Hedwig and the Angry Inch and director of the films Shortbus, Rabbit Hole, and How to Talk to Girls at Parties. His television acting credits include Joe vs. Carole, The Sandman, Shrill, Girls, The Good Fight, Yellowjackets, and City on Fire. He has toured with a Bowie-themed concert, Black Star Symphony, and a career retrospective called Cassette Roulette. With Bryan Weller he created the musical podcast series Anthem: Homunculus starring Glenn Close, Patti Lupone, and Laurie Anderson, and his scripted podcast series Cancellation Island, stars Holly Hunter; both were produced by Topic Studios.

George Saunders is the #1 New York Times bestselling author of eleven books, including Liberation Day, 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. Lincoln in the BardoPastoralia, and Tenth of December were recently included in the New York Times’ Authors and Readers Best Books of the 21st Century.

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

“Joyas Voladoras,” by Brian Doyle. Permission for this reading is from The American Scholar, Volume 73, No. 4, Autumn 2004. Copyright © 2004 by Brian Doyle.

Excerpt from Fox 8, by George Saunders (Random House, 2018). First published in digital format (Random House, 2013). Copyright © 2013 by George Saunders. Used by permission of ICM Partners.