Host Meg Wolitzer presents three works featuring birds, curated by writer and bird aficionado Amy Tan. Ben Loory’s “The Frog and the Bird” is a twist on the traditional fable genre; it’s performed by Mike Doyle. Teenagers are transformed in “Town of Birds” by Heather Monley, performed by Yetide Badaki; and an avian love song goes viral in Mikkel Rosengaard’s “The Mating Call,” performed by BD Wong. Tan comments on the program’s theme and the stories.
Yetide Badaki is a Nigerian-born actress known for the Starz fantasy drama American Gods, as well as appearances on Lost, Touch, Criminal Minds, Masters of Sex, and This Is Us. As a theater actress in Chicago, Badaki won acclaim for her performances at the Victory Gardens Theater and Steppenwolf. Her film credits include Rise, Cardinal X, A Chance of Rain, What We Found, and Run Fast.
Mike Doyle has appeared on screen in New Amsterdam, City on a Hill, The Romanoffs, Law & Order: Special Victims Unit, The Accidental Wolf, Narcos: Mexico, Jersey Boys, The Invitation, and Green Lantern, among others. His stage credits include The New Century at Lincoln Center and Betrayed with the Culture Project. Doyle wrote and directed the feature film Almost Love starring Kate Walsh, Patricia Clarkson, and Scott Evans. He is currently working on his next film, Passing Through.
Ben Loory is the author of the collections Tales of Falling and Flying and Stories for Nighttime and Some for the Day, both from Penguin Books. His fables and tales have appeared in TheNew Yorker, BOMB Magazine, Fairy Tale Review, and A Public Space; been anthologized in The New Voices of Fantasy and Year’s Best Weird Fiction; and heard on This American Life. He is also the author of a picture book for children, The Baseball Player and the Walrus. Loory lives and teaches short story writing in Los Angeles.
Heather Monley is an author whose work has been featured in The O. Henry Prize Stories, ZYZZYVA, Alaska Quarterly Review, Crazyhorse, New Orleans Review, Hobart,McSweeney’s Internet Tendency, and The Normal School, among others. She received a scholarship from the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, a fellowship from The Lighthouse Works, and a residency from PLAYA. Her story “Town of Birds” won the Kenyon Review Short Fiction Contest.
Mikkel Rosengaard is an author whose first novel, The Invention of Ana, has been published in five languages. He is a MacDowell Fellow and the recipient of the Danish Arts Foundation’s Unge Kunstneriske Elite award. His work has appeared in Bookforum, McSweeney’s, BOMB Magazine, PBS’s Art21, and many other publications. Rosengaard grew up in Elsinore, Denmark, and lives in New York City.
Amy Tan is the author of The Valley of Amazement, The Joy Luck Club, The Kitchen God's Wife, The Hundred Secret Senses, The Bonesetter's Daughter, The Opposite of Fate, Saving Fish from Drowning, Where the Past Begins: A Writer’s Memoir, and the children's books The Moon Lady and Sagwa, the Chinese Siamese Cat. Tan was a co-producer and co-screenwriter of the film version of The Joy Luck Club and the librettist for the opera The Bonesetter's Daughter. Her next book, The Backyard Bird Chronicles, will be published in Fall 2023.
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. She is excited to be the new host of the literary radio show and podcast Selected Shorts.
BD Wong received the Tony, Drama Desk, Outer Critics Circle, Theatre World, and Clarence Derwent awards for his Broadway debut in M. Butterfly. Additional Broadway credits include You’re a Good Man, Charlie Brown and Pacific Overtures. On screen, he has appeared in Father of the Bride, Mulan, Seven Years In Tibet, Bird Box, the Jurassic Park franchise, All-American Girl, Oz, Law & Order: Special Victims Unit, Awake, Madam Secretary, Gotham, American Horror Story: Apocalypse, Mr. Robot, and Awkwafina Is Nora from Queens. Wong recently directed the World Premiere of Mr. Holland's Opus, The New Musical, at the Ogunquit Playhouse in Maine, which he co-wrote with composer Wayne Barker. He will appear in the upcoming film Heart of Stone.
CREDITS
“The Frog and the Bird” by Ben Loory, from Tales of Falling and Flying (Penguin, September 2017). First published in Another Chicago Magazine. Copyright © 2017 by Ben Loory. Used by permission of the author.
“The Mating Call” by Mikkel Rosengaard. First published in McSweeney’s, 63. Copyright © by Mikkel Rosengaard. Used by permission of the author.
“Town of Birds” by Heather Monley. First appeared in the Kenyon Review (Winter 2014, Vol. XXXVI Number 1). Copyright © 2014 by Heather Monley. Used by permission of the author.
“Chasing Birds” by Cristina Henríquez. First published in Ploughshares. Copyright © 2006 by Cristina Henríquez. Used by permission of The Book Group.
