Guest host Maulik Pancholy presents a show about the past, the future, and how time flies. A young actor recalls critical moments in her childhood in Elizabeth Strout’s “Snow Blind,” read by Melora Hardin. Old schoolmates almost hook up in Joyce Carol Oates’ “August Evening,” read by Sonia Manzano. In our final story, a lifetime goes by in “Half a Day,” by Naguib Mahfouz, read by Bruce Altman.
Guest host Maulik Pancholy presents a show about the past, the future, and how time flies. A young actor recalls critical moments in her childhood in Elizabeth Strout’s “Snow Blind,” read by Melora Hardin. Strout is the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Olive Kitteridge, which was adapted into an Emmy-winning HBO series starring Frances McDormand; as well as The Burgess Boys, a New York Times bestseller; Abide with Me, a national bestseller and BookSense pick, and My Name is Lucy Barton recently adapted for the stage by Rona Munro. Strout has also been a finalist for the PEN/Faulkner Award and the Orange Prize in England. Her short stories have been published in The New Yorker, O: The Oprah Magazine, and many other periodicals. Strout’s most recent work is Anything is Possible.
Reader Melora Hardin is known for her work on NBC’s “The Office,” and can currently be seen on the Freeform series “The Bold Type,” and on Amazon’s “Transparent” in her Emmy- nominated role as Tammy Cashman. Other television work includes “Friends,” “Gilmore Girls,” “Monk,” “The Blacklist,” “Falling Skies,” and “Scandal.” On film she’s appeared in “17 Again,” “Hannah Montana: The Movie,” “27 Dresses,” “The Hot Chick,” and “Absolute Power and You,” which she also directed. She recently starred in the one-woman movie “Golden Vanity.”
Old schoolmates almost hook up in Joyce Carol Oates’ “August Evening,” read by Sonia Manzano. Oates is a master of psychic dread, but in this short piece, she’s a mistress of compression.
She has won the National Book Award and the PEN/Malamud Award for Excellence in Short Fiction. She is the author of the national bestsellers We Were the Mulvaneys and Blonde (a finalist for the National Book Award and the Pulitzer Prize), among many other books--56 novels, over 30 collections of short stories, eight volumes of poetry, plays as well as innumerable essays and book reviews. In 1996, Oates received the PEN/Malamud Award for a lifetime of literary achievement.
“August Evening” is read by an actor with an equally long career, Sonia Manzano--known to millions of children and parents through her role as Maria on “Sesame Street,” a character she played from 1971 to 2015. Her theatre credits include “The Vagina Monologues,” “The Exonerated” and the original production of “Godspell.” She has won fifteen Emmy Awards as a writer for “Sesame Street,” and received the 2003 Hispanic Heritage Award. Closer to home, she is proud to have been inducted into the Bronx Hall of Fame. She has written for the Peabody Award-winning Nickelodeon series “Little Bill,” is the author of the picture books No Dogs Allowed! and A Box Full of Kittens, and the memoir Becoming Maria: Love and Chaos in the South Bronx.
In our final story, a lifetime goes by in “Half a Day,” by Naguib Mahfooz, read by Bruce Altman. Mahfouz (1911 - 2006) received the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1988. He is best known for his Cairo Trilogy, as well as The Children of Gebelawi, The Thief and the Dogs, and Adrift on the Nile among other works. In 1989, Mahfouz was awarded the Presidential Medal of Honor from the American University in Cairo, and he was elected to both the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
Bruce Altman’s film and television credits include “Glengarry Glen Ross,” “Matchstick Men,” “Arbitrage,” “Touched with Fire,” the Peabody Award-winning “Nothing Sacred,” “The Sopranos,” “Blue Bloods,” “Modern Family,” “Mr. Robot,” and “Madoff.” His theater career includes productions at Yale Rep, Long Wharf, the American Conservatory Theater, and the Theater for the New City.
