Greg Ames is the author of Buffalo Lockjaw, a novel that won a NAIBA Book of the Year Award, and Funeral Platter, a collection of twenty short stories, including several that have been featured on Selected Shorts. His work has appeared in Best American Nonrequired Reading,Southern Review, McSweeney’s, The Sun, Catapult, and North American Review, among many others. He teaches in the English department at Colgate University.
Kali Fajardo-Anstine is the author of the national bestselling novel Woman of Light, winner of a 2023 WILLA Literary Award, and the story collection Sabrina & Corina, a finalist for the National Book Award and winner of an American Book Award. She was a 2023 Guggenheim Fellow and the 2021 recipient of the Addison M. Metcalf Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. Her work has appeared in The New York Times, The Atlantic, Harper’s Bazaar, ELLE, O: the Oprah Magazine, and elsewhere. Born and raised in Denver, Colorado, she is the 2022-2024 Endowed Chair in Creative Writing at Texas State University.
Sonia Manzano is a groundbreaking educator, executive television producer, and award-winning children’s book author. A first-generation American of Latino descent, she created the part of Maria on Sesame Street, for which she received an Emmy Lifetime Achievement Award. Manzano has also received 15 Emmys for writing, the Congressional Hispanic Caucus Award, the Hispanic Heritage Award for Education, and a Poderosa—most powerful woman award—from People en Espanol. Her animated children’s series, Alma's Way, has been running on PBS since 2021. Manzano’s critically acclaimed children’s books include A World Together, Miracle on 133rd Street, The Revolution of Evelyn Serrano, A Box Full of Kittens, No Dogs Allowed!, and the memoir Becoming Maria. Her latest novel, Coming Up Cuban, was released in August 2022.
Maulik Pancholy is an award-winning actor, author, and activist. He is best known for his comedic turns on television playing Jonathan on the Emmy, Golden Globe, and SAG award–winning NBC comedy 30 Rock. He played Sanjay on Showtime’s hit series Weeds, and starred as Neal on the NBC comedy Whitney. He is the voice of Baljeet on Disney’s Emmy Award–winning Phineas and Ferb and the title voice of Sanjay on Nickelodeon’s Sanjay and Craig. For his work on television, he has been nominated for and won the Screen Actors Guild award on multiple occasions. On Broadway, Pancholy has starred in Grand Horizons and It’s Only A Play. Pancholy’s debut novel, The Best at It, was named a 2020 Stonewall Honor Book, a 2019 Junior Library Guild Selection, and a Chicago Public Library Best of the Best Books. His second novel, Nikhil Out Loud, was named a 2023 Lambda Literary Award Winner and a Kirkus Best Book of 2022. Pancholy is currently creating, executive producing, and writing a fiction, scripted podcast for Broadway Video, and his third novel, Will They, Won't They, is slated for a Summer 2026 release. A longtime advocate for the Asian American and Pacific Islander (AAPI) and LGBTQIA+ communities, Pancholy was appointed by President Barack Obama to serve on the President’s Advisory Commission on AAPIs. He is also a co-founder of the AAPI anti-bullying nonprofit ActToChange.org, which envisions a world where all young people can celebrate their identities.
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
“A Love Letter” by Greg Ames, from Funeral Platter (Arcade, 2017). Copyright © 2017 by Greg Ames. Used by permission of the author.
“Sugar Babies” by Kali Fajardo-Anstine, from Sabrina & Corina (One World, 2019). Copyright © 2019 by Kali Fajardo-Anstine. Used by permission of Watkins/Loomis Agency, Inc.
