Redemption

Andre Braugher is a two-time Emmy Award winner for his breakout role in Homicide: Life on the Street and for the television mini-series Thief. His film and television credits include Glory, City of Angels, Gideon’s Crossing, Hack, Salem’s Lot, The Mist, The Andromeda Strain, Men of a Certain Age, Law & Order: Special Victims Unit, New Girl, BoJack Horseman, and Live in Front of a Studio Audience as James Evans on Good Times. Braugher’s stage credits include the Public Theater’s productions of Coriolanus, Twelfth Night, Measure for Measure, Richard II, and Hamlet, and has won Obie Awards for his leading roles in the Public’s Henry V and The Whipping Man at Manhattan Theatre Club. He can currently be seen in Brooklyn Nine-Nine, for which he has been nominated for five consecutive Emmy Awards.

Carys Davies is author of the novel West and two collections of short stories: Some New Ambush and The Redemption of Galen Pike, winner of the Frank O’Connor International Short Story Award and the Jerwood Fiction Uncovered Prize. Her works, fiction and nonfiction, have been featured in Granta, Ploughshares, The Daily Telegraph, The Guardian, The Dublin Review, and The Royal Society of Literature Review, among other publications. Davies has been honored with awards including the Royal Society of Literature's V.S. Pritchett Prize, the Society of Authors' Olive Cook Short Story Award, a Northern Writers’ Award, and a Cullman Fellowship.

Jennifer Ikeda’s stage appearances, both on and off-Broadway, include Titus Andronicus, Macbeth, As You Like It with the Public Theater, Vietgone, Top Girls, Linda with MTC, and most recently, King Philip’s Head… with Clubbed Thumb. She has also been featured in the television shows Blue Bloods, New Amsterdam, Maniac, Tell Me a Story, and the forthcoming series Dash & Lily, and the films Advantageous and Swing, among others. Ikeda has narrated dozens of audiobooks and has been honored with two Audie Awards.

Jane Kaczmarek is best known for her role as Lois on Malcolm in the Middle, for which she received 7 consecutive Emmy nominations as well as nominations for the Golden Globe and SAG Awards. A graduate of the University of Wisconsin and Yale School of Drama, Kaczmarek made her television debut on The Paper Chase and Hill Street Blues and most recently can be seen on The Big Bang Theory, This Is Us, Carol's Second Act, and Mixed-ish. In New York, Kaczmarek has appeared on Broadway and off at the Manhattan Theatre Club, Second Stage, the Public Theatre, New York Theater Workshop, and 6 seasons at the Williamstown Theatre Festival. Her recent theater credits include in Long Day's Journey Into Night, Our Town with Deaf West Theatre, and The Year to Come at La Jolla Playhouse. Kaczmarek’s favorite job is raising her three kids and reading/hosting Selected Shorts across America.

Rachel Khong’s debut novel, Goodbye, Vitamin, was honored with the California Book Award for First Fiction and named a Best Book of the Year by NPR, O magazine, Vogue, Esquire, Huffington Post, Nylon, and Booklist, among other publications. Her writing has appeared in The Paris Review, American Short Fiction, and The San Francisco Chronicle. She previously served as Executive Editor of Lucky Peach.

Toni Morrison (1931-2019) is the author of eleven novels, from The Bluest Eye (1970) to God Help the Child (2015). She received the National Book Critics Circle Award, the Pulitzer Prize, and in 1993 she was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature.

David Sedaris is a humorist, author, comedian, and radio contributor. He is the author of Calypso,Theft By Finding, Let's Explore Diabetes with Owls, Squirrel Seeks Chipmunk, When You Are Engulfed in Flames, Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim, Me Talk Pretty One Day, Holidays on Ice, Naked, and Barrel Fever. He is also the editor of Children Playing Before a Statue of Hercules: An Anthology of Outstanding Stories. Sedaris’s pieces appear regularly in The New Yorker and have twice been included in The Best American Essays. His original radio pieces can be heard on This American Life, and he is a regular contributor to BBC Radio 4. Sedaris and his sister Amy have collaborated on several plays under the name “The Talent Family,” including Stump the Host, Stitches, One Woman Shoe, which received an Obie Award, Incident at Cobbler’s Knob, and The Book of Liz. In 2013, A feature film adaptation of his story “C.O.G.” premiered at the Sundance Film Festival, and the art book David Sedaris Diaries: A Visual Compendium was published in 2017.