Jane Curtin has appeared on Broadway in Noises Off, Candida, and Our Town. Her off-Broadway work includes Love Letters and the musical revue Pretzels, which she co-wrote. She starred in the television series 3rd Rock from the Sun and won back-to-back Emmy Awards for her role on Kate & Allie. She is an original cast member of Saturday Night Live and also starred in the television film series The Librarian and its spin-off, The Librarians. Her film credits include Coneheads; Antz; I Love You, Man; I Don’t Know How She Does It; The Heat; The Spy Who Dumped Me; Can You Ever Forgive Me?; Ode to Joy; Godmothered; Queen Bees; and Jules, opposite Sir Ben Kingsley. She starred on the television series Unforgettable and has had guest appearances on The Good Wife, 48 Hours ’til Monday, The Good Fight, Broad City, United We Fall, and Bupkis. Upcoming projects include the miniseries The Residence.
Jacob Guajardo lives and writes in Michigan. His fiction has appeared in places such as Midwestern Gothic, Necessary Fiction, Hobart, Passages North, and The Best American Short Stories 2018. He is a graduate of the University of Florida creative writing program and a MacDowell Fellow.
Michael Hartney has been a Comedy Central Comic to Watch and a New Face at the Just For Laughs Festival in Montreal. At New York’s Upright Citizens Brigade Theatre, he spent over ten years as a writer, performer, and director, co-creating the hugely popular Characters Welcome show. His television credits include WeCrashed, 30 Rock, The Politician, The Break with Michelle Wolf, The Who Was? Show, One Horse Town, and Throwing Shade, where he also served as a staff writer. Hartney created the roles of Stanley and Mr. Williams in the original Broadway cast of School of Rock The Musical. In late 2020, he co-founded Squirrel Comedy Theatre, a nonprofit offering shows and classes, and the improv group Borabish.
Etgar Keret was born in Ramat Gan and now lives in Tel Aviv. A recipient of the French Chevalier des Arts et des Lettres, the Charles Bronfman Prize, and the Caméra d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival, he is the author of the memoir The Seven Good Years and story collections including Fly Already; The Bus Driver Who Wanted to Be God; The Nimrod Flipout; and Suddenly, a Knock on the Door. His work has been translated into over forty-five languages and appeared in TheNew Yorker, the Wall Street Journal, Paris Review, and TheNew York Times, among other publications.
Haruki Murakami is the author of numerous best-selling novels, short story collections, and works of nonfiction, including The Elephant Vanishes, The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, Underground, Kafka on the Shore, What I Talk About When I Talk About Running, 1Q84, Men Without Women, and Killing Commendatore. His stories have appeared in English in The New Yorker, Granta, and numerous other publications. He has been honored with the Franz Kafka Prize, the Jerusalem Prize, the World Fantasy Award, the Frank O’Connor International Short Story Award, and the Hans Christian Andersen Literature Award, among others. Murakami’s work has been translated into 50 languages. The novel The City and Its Uncertain Walls will be published in November.
Liev Schreiber is best known for Showtimes’ Ray Donovan, for which he earned five Golden Globe nominations and three Emmy nominations. His film credits include the Scream trilogy, X-Men Origins: Wolverine, The Manchurian Candidate, Spotlight, Isle of Dogs, Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse, Ray Donovan: The Movie, The French Dispatch, Across the River and Into the Trees, Asteroid City, Golda, A Small Light, and Command Z. His stage credits include Glengarry Glen Ross, for which he won a Tony Award, A View from the Bridge, (Drama Desk Award), Talk Radio, Les Liaisons Dangereuses, Cymbeline, (Obie Award), Hamlet, Henry V, Macbeth, and Doubt (Tony nomination). Upcoming projects include The Perfect Couple and The Guns of Christmas Past.
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
“Almost Everything” and “Conquistadors, on Fairchild” were commissioned by Symphony Space for the collection Small Odysseys: Selected Shorts Presents 35 New Stories, edited by Hannah Tinti, published by Algonquin Books. © 2022 by Symphony Space.
“Ice Man” by Haruki Murakami, translated by Philip Gabriel, from Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman (Knopf, 2006). First published in The New Yorker (February 2, 2003). Copyright © 2003 by Haruki Murakami. Used by permission of International Creative Management.
