Guest host Robert Sean Leonard presents four stories with lessons for us. In T.C. Boyle’s “The Five-Pound Burrito,” a chef goes over the top. Santino Fontana reads. A lonely millennial learns that you can’t hurry puppy love in “Love (or Live Cargo)” by Nancy Jooyoun Kim, read by Valorie Curry. Military acronyms can’t disguise the emotional toll of war in Phil Klay’s “OIF,” read by Brandon J. Dirden; and The Last Supper may be depicted in “The Tablecloth of Turin,” by Ron Carlson, read by Edi Gathegi.
In T.C. Boyle’s “The Five-Pound Burrito,” a vision in a tortilla prompts a chef to go over the top. Boyle is the author of 27 books of fiction. His published works include the novels World’s End, winner of the PEN/Faulkner Award; Drop City, a New York Times bestseller and finalist for the National Book Award; The Terranauts; and the short story collections Greasy Lake and Other Stories, After the Plague, T.C. Boyle Stories, T.C. Boyle Stories II, and most recently, The Relive Box and Other Stories. His works have appeared in The New Yorker, The Atlantic, Harper’s, Granta, and The Paris Review, among other publications. Boyle won the PEN/Malamud Award for the Short Story and the Rea Award for the Short Story in 2014. Reader Santino Fontana is best known for voicing the character Prince Hans in the animated feature “Frozen.” He has been seen in the film “Sisters,” and his television credits include “Crazy Ex-Girlfriend,” “Shades of Blue,” “Mozart in the Jungle,” and the Web series “Submissions Only.” On stage, Fontana won the 2012 Drama Desk and Outer Critics Circle awards for his performance in “Sons of the Prophet.” Additionally, he has starred in “God Bless You,” “Mr. Rosewater with Encores!”, and on Broadway in “1776,” “The Importance of Being Earnest,” “Act One,” “Billy Elliot,” “Cinderella,” for which he received a Tony nomination, “Hello Dolly,” and the musical adaptation of “Tootsie.”
In our second story, “Love (or Live Cargo)” by Nancy Jooyoun Kim, a lonely millennial learns that you can’t hurry puppy love. Reader Valorie Curry is a founding member of Los Angeles’ Ovation Award-winning Coeurage Theatre Company, with which she starred in “Balm in Gilead” and the West Coast premiere of Shakespeare’s “Double Falsehood.” Additional theater credits include “One Day When We Were Young,” “The Diviners,” and “The Diary of Anne Frank.” On television, she has appeared in “The Following,” “Veronica Mars,” “Psych,” “CSI: New York,” “House of Lies,” and “ The Tick.” Her film credits include “Twilight: Breaking Dawn,” “Blair Witch,” “American Pastoral,” “Inherit the Viper” and “After Darkness.” She is the founder of the production company 26 Films and a member of New York’s Fundamental Theater Project.
Our next story is from Phil Klay’s Redeployment. It’s a stunning collection of stories about war and the experience of military personnel in Iraq and Afghanistan that earned him the National Book Award. In “OIF,” military acronyms can’t disguise the emotional toll of war. Reader Brandon J. Dirden starred on Broadway as Martin Luther King, Jr. in the Tony Award-winning production of All the Way opposite Bryan Cranston, and as Booster in the recent production of August Wilson's Jitney. Additional Broadway credits include “Clybourne Park,” “Enron,” and “Prelude to a Kiss.” Off-Broadway, he has appeared in “The Piano Lesson,” for which he won Obie, Theatre World, and AUDELCO awards; “The First Breeze of Summer” and “Day of Absence,” “ Detroit ’67,” and “Peter and the Starcatcher.” On television he has appeared in “The Good Wife,” “The Big C,” “Public Morals,” and “The Americans,” and currently can be seen on the Netflix series, “The Get Down.”
The lesson in our final story might be “consider the source,” as a retired insurance investigator tells his audience that the tablecloth he is displaying is the very one used during “The Last Supper.” Writer Ron Carlson is the author of two other SHORTS favorites--“Plan B for the Human Race,” and “The H Street Sledding Record.” Carlson is also the award-winning author of four story collections and five novels, most recently Return to Oakpine. His fiction has appeared in Harper’s, The New Yorker, Playboy, and GQ, and has been featured on “This American Life” as well as in Best American Short Stories and The O. Henry Prize Stories. His novella, “Beanball,” was selected for Best American Mystery Stories.
Reader Edi Gathegi’s television work includes featured roles on “House,” “Blacklist,” and “Into the Badlands.” On film he’s appeared in “Gone Baby Gone,” “Twilight,” “Twilight: New Moon,” and “X-Men: First Class.”
