Known for his work in The Hangover and National Treasure franchises, Justin Bartha was most recently seen in Atlanta, The Godfather of Harlem, and The Good Fight. Additional credits include the films Sweet Girl, Driven, White Girl, Holy Rollers, Dark Horse, Failure to Launch, and The Rebound. Stage credits include the Tony-nominated revival of Lend Me a Tenor, Jesse Eisenberg's Asunción, Robert Askins’ Permission, and Neil Simon's Sunshine Boys for The Center Theatre Group. His upcoming projects include the series National Treasure: Edge of History coming to Disney+.
Cherline Bazile is a Haitian American writer from Florida. She graduated from Harvard University and received her MFA in Fiction from the Helen Zell Writers’ Program at the University of Michigan. Her work has been supported by the Paul & Daisy Soros Fellowship, the Mass Cultural Council, the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the Vermont Studio Center, and more.
Min Jin Lee is the author of the novels Free Food for Millionaires and Pachinko, a finalist for the National Book Award, and runner-up for the Dayton Literary Peace Prize. In 2022, Lee received the Manhae Grand Prize for Literature, the Bucheon Diaspora Literary Award, and the Samsung Happiness for Tomorrow Award for Creativity from South Korea. She is the recipient of fellowships in Fiction from the Guggenheim Foundation, the Radcliffe Institute of Advanced Study at Harvard, and the New York Foundation for the Arts. Lee is an inductee of the New York Foundation for the Arts Hall of Fame and the New York State Writers Hall of Fame. She is a Writer-in-Residence at Amherst College and serves as a trustee of PEN America and a director of the Authors Guild. She is at work on her third novel, American Hagwon and a nonfiction work, Name Recognition.
Grace Paley (1922 – 2007) is the daughter of Ukrainian/Russian Jewish immigrants, growing up in The Bronx. Works include The Little Disturbances of Man, Enormous Changes at the Last Minute, Later the Same Day, Collected Stories, and Just As I Thought. She taught at Sarah Lawrence, Columbia University, City College of New York, and Syracuse University, and was a founder of the Teachers & Writers Collaborative. She received numerous awards and honors, including a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1961, the 1989 Edith Wharton Award, the 1994 Jewish Cultural Achievement Award for Literary Arts, the Rea Award for the Short Story in 1992, and the Vermont Award for Excellence in the Arts in 1993. In 1989, Governor Mario Cuomo declared her the first official New York State Writer. She was Vermont's Poet Laureate from 2003 to 2007. Her poetry includes Long Walks and Intimate Talks, Leaning Forward, New and Collected Poems, Begin Again, Fidelity, published posthumously in 2008, and A Grace Paley Reader: Stories, Essays, and Poetry, published in 2017. She has been called a combative pacifist. Her literary life and personal responsibilities were inseparable from her political life and human responsibilities.
Anna Uzele is a New York-based actress who recently starred in the Broadway musical New York, New York, inspired by the Martin Scorcese film of the same name, for which she was nominated for the Drama League Award for Distinguished Performance, the Outer Critics Circle Award for Outstanding Lead Performer in a Broadway Musical, and the Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Lead Performance in a Musical. On screen, Anna recently starred as Adriana on Apple TV+’s Dear Edward, based on the award-winning novel by Ann Napolitano. She previously recurred on Showtime’s City on a Hill and guest-starred on CBS’ FBI. On the stage, Uzele made her Broadway debut in Once on this Island. She starred as Catherine Parr in the North American tour and Broadway debut of Six. She and the cast were nominated for a Grammy Award for Best Musical Theater Album. Anna is a graduate of Texas State University, where she earned her BFA in musical theater.
Meg Wolitzer is the New York Times bestselling author of The Female Persuasion, The Interestings, The Ten-Year Nap, and The Wife, among other books. She was the guest editor of The Best American Short Stories 2017, and 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
“Tender,” by Cherline Bazile, from The Best American Short Stories 2023 (Mariner Books, 2023). First appeared in The Sewanee Review (Spring 2022). Copyright © 2022 by Cherline Bazile. Adapted version of the text used by permission of the author.
“The Contest” © 1958 by Grace Paley. Reprinted in The Collected Stories (1994) by Grace Paley.
