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.
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, 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 with Alfred Molina, 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.
Jamil Jan Kochai is the author of 99 Nights in Logar, which was a finalist forthe Pen/Hemingway Award for Debut Novel and the DSC Prize for South Asian Literature. He was born in an Afghan refugee camp in Peshawar, Pakistan, but he originally hails from Logar, Afghanistan. His short stories and essays have appeared in The New Yorker, The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, Ploughshares, and The O. Henry Prize Stories 2018. Currently he is a Stegner Fellow at Stanford University.
Leo Solomon has a Master of Fine Arts in Acting from the Actors Studio Drama School in New York, and a Bachelors of Science in Computer Science and Engineering from the University of Minnesota. Leo is of Afghan descent, plays classical piano, contributes and volunteers with various humanitarian organizations, and also speaks Farsi, Hindi, Spanish, and French. Leo's credits include recurring as a guest star on Veep and Homeland, and guest starring on Blue Bloods, NCIS, and Lie to Me, among others. He has also been the lead in numerous films, one of which landed him "Best Breakthrough Performance" at the Monaco Film Festival. Upcoming projects include the short film Mater Mortis and a feature called Dickie K.
Jesmyn Ward is the author of the novels Where the Line Bleeds and Salvage the Bones, which won the 2011 National Book Award, and Sing, Unburied, Sing, which won the 2017 National Book Award. She is also the editor of the anthology The Fire This Time and the author of the memoir Men We Reaped, which was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award. From 2008 to 2010, Ward had a Stegner Fellowship at Stanford University. In 2016, the American Academy of Arts and Letters selected Ward for the Strauss Living Award. Ward is currently a professor of creative writing at Tulane University.
Kevin Wilson is the author of two story collections and three novels, including The Family Fang, Perfect Little World, Tunneling to the Center of the Earth, and most recently, Nothing to See Here. His stories have appeared in Ploughshares, A Public Space, The Southern Review, Subtropics, and elsewhere. Wilson teaches at the University of the South.
CREDITS
“Playing Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain” by Jamil Jan Kochai. First published in The New Yorker, January 6, 2020. Copyright © 2020 by Jamil Jan Kochai. Used by permission of The Wylie Agency, LLC.
“Biology” by Kevin Wilson. First published in The Southern Review, 56.1. Copyright © 2020 by Kevin Wilson. Used by permission of the author.
