Lesley Nneka Arimah is the author of the short story collection What It Means When a Man Falls From the Sky, winner of the Kirkus Prize for Fiction, the Minnesota Book Award for Fiction, the New York Public Library’s Young Lions Fiction Award, and was selected for Now Read This, the New York Times/PBS book club. Her work has been featured in The New Yorker, Harper’s, McSweeney’s, and Granta. Her stories have won a National Magazine Award, the Caine Prize, and the O. Henry Prize, and she has been a National Book Foundation 5 Under 35 honoree.
Taryn Bowe’s recent work has appeared in Epoch, The Sewanee Review, Indiana Review, Bellevue Literary Review, and Joyland. She lives with her husband and daughter in Maine, where she serves as the Associate Director at the Maine Writers & Publishers Alliance.
Crystal Dickinson won the Theatre World Award for her Broadway debut in the 2012 production of Clybourne Park. She subsequently appeared in You Can’t Take It With You on Broadway in 2014, A Raisin in the Sun, Seven Guitars, and Wine in the Wilderness at Two River Theater, Lessons in Survival at the Vineyard Theatre, The Low Road and Cullud Wattah at The Public Theater, Covenant at the Roundabout Theater, and The White Chip at the Robert W. Wilson MCC Theater. Her film and television credits include The Accidental Wolf, I Origins, The Good Wife, Feed the Beast, New Amsterdam, and recurring roles on The CHI and For Life. Dickinson has taught at Stella Adler Studio, Spelman College, Pace University, Princeton University, the Juilliard School, NYU, University of Illinois, and Seton Hall. In June, Dickinson will star in August Wilson’s Gem of the Ocean at Two River Theater.
Edie Falco is best known for her roles as Diane Whittlesey on the HBO series Oz, Carmela Soprano on The Sopranos, and the title role of Showtime’s Nurse Jackie. For her television work she has received multiple Emmy, Golden Globe, and SAG awards, as well as the American Film Institute’s Award for Female Television Actor of the Year. Broadway credits include the Tony Award–winning play Sideman, Frankie and Johnny in The Clair De Lune, ’Night Mother, and The House of Blue Leaves, for which she received a Tony nomination. Off-broadway she has appeared in The Madrid, This Wide Night, The True, and Morning Sun. Her work in feature film includes Cost of Living, for which she received the American Film Institute’s Best Actress Award, Laws of Gravity, receiving and Independent Spirit Award nomination, Sunshine State, Landline, Hurricane, The Funeral, The Addiction, Freedomland, The Land of Steady Habits, Judy Berlin, Avatar: The Way of The Water, Fool’s Paradise, The Mother, I’ll Be Right There, and the forthcoming Avatar3 and The Parenting.
Meg Wolitzer is the New York Times bestselling author of The Female Persuasion, The Interestings, The Ten-Year Nap, and The Wife, which was adapted to film in 2018, starring Glenn Close and Jonathan Pryce. She was the guest editor of The Best American Short Stories 2017, and has also published books for young readers, mostly recently a picture book, Millions of Maxes. Wolitzer 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
“Light” by Lesley Nneka Arimah, from What It Means When a Man Falls From the Sky (Penguin Random House, 2017). First appeared in Granta (2015). Copyright © 2015 by Lesley Nneka Arimah. Used by permission of Georges Borchardt, Inc.
“Camp Emeline,” by Taryn Bowe, from The Best American Short Stories 2023 (Mariner Books, 2023). First appeared in Indiana Review (Vol. 44, No. 1, Spring 2022). Copyright © 2022 by Taryn Bowe. Adapted version of the text used by permission of the author.
