The Me I Used To Be

Anya DeNiro is a trans woman and fiction writer living in Minnesota. Her most recent book is City of a Thousand Feelings from Aqueduct Press. “Take Pills and Wait for Hips” is an excerpt from her most recent novel, OKPsyche. Her work has been shortlisted for the O. Henry Award and longlisted for the Frank O’Connor International Short Story Award.

Abby Comstock-Gay is a translator currently living in Rochester, New York. She also teaches Turkish at the University of Rochester. Up until recently, she was an associate editor with Words Without Borders Campus. Before moving to Rochester, Abby lived in Turkey for four years on a Fulbright Grant.

A. M. Homes is the author of the novels Jack, In a County of Mothers, The End of Alice, Music for Torching, This Book Will Save Your Life, and May We Be Forgiven, winner of the Orange/Women’s Prize for Fiction. Homes is also the author of the memoir The Mistress’s Daughter and the short-story collections The Safety of Objects, Things You Should Know, and Days of Awe. Her newest novel, The Unfolding, was published by Viking in September 2022. She teaches in the Program in Creative Writing at Princeton.

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. On stage, she has appeared on Broadway and off, and for 6 seasons at the Williamstown Theatre Festival. Her recent theater credits include Long Day's Journey Into Night with Alfred Molina and in a co-production of Our Town with Deaf West Theatre and the 2023 Tony Award–winning Pasadena Playhouse. Kaczmarek can currently be seen in The Changeling on AppleTV+, starring LaKeith Stanfield, and the short film Now I Lay Me Down, which was screened at the Santa Barbara Film Festival in February.

Arian Moayed is the Co-founder & Board Chair of Waterwell, a civic-minded and socially-conscious theater and education company, as well as a partner at the for-profit Waterwell Films. Most recently with Waterwell, Moayed arranged the transcripts of a deportation proceeding called The Courtroom, now a feature film. He wrote and directed the Emmy-nominated series The Accidental Wolf. Notable acting credits include a dual-language Hamlet, The Humans, for which he won a Drama Desk Award, his Obie Award–winning role in Guards at the Taj, and his Tony-nominated turns in A Doll’s House and Bengal Tiger at the Baghdad Zoo. Recent television and film appearances include You Hurt My Feelings, Elsbeth, Retribution, Succession, Spider-Man: No Way Home, Inventing Anna, and Ms. Marvel.

Pooya Mohseni is a New York–based actor, writer, and transgender activist, born and raised in Tehran, Iran. She has appeared in Hamlet and Comedy of Errors at the Play On Shakespeare Festival, One Woman with United Solo, Galatea with the WP Project, The Good Muslim at EST, White Snake at Baltimore Center Stage, Death of the Persian Prince with the Midtown International Theatre Festival and the SAIPAF, A Touch of Forever with the New York International Fringe Festival, and the world premiere of English with Atlantic Theater Company. Her film and television credits include Law & Order: SVU, Big Dogs, Falling Water, Madam Secretary, Lucky, Terrifier, See You Then, Remote, Entanglement, Nightmare Radio: The Nightstalker, The Arrival, and Bound.

Tony Shalhoub is a Golden Globe, SAG, and three-time Emmy Award–winner for his leading role on Monk. His screen credits include Wings, Men in Black, The Siege, Galaxy Quest, Big Night, Barton Fink, The Man Who Wasn’t There, Spy Kids, Cars, Nurse Jackie, BrainDead, Final Portrait, Linoleum, Flamin’ Hot, The Company You Keep, Mr. Monk’s Last Case, and The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, for which he was honored with an Emmy Award. On Broadway, he has appeared in The Odd Couple, The Heidi Chronicles, Conversations With My Father, Lend Me a Tenor, Golden Boy, Act One, The Price, and What Became of Us. In 2018, Shalhoub earned a Tony Award for Best Actor in a Musical for his role in The Band’s Visit.

Yalçın Tosun teaches law at İstanbul Bilgi University. His story collections include Anne, Baba ve Diğer Ölümcül Şeyler (Mom, Dad and Other Fatal Things), which won the Notre Dame de Sion Prize for literature, Peruk Gibi Hüzünlü (Sad like a Wig), which was awarded the Sait Faik Prize in 2012, Dokunma Dersleri (Lessons in Touching), and Bir Nedene Sunuldum (I was Offered to a Cause), for which he won the Yunus Nadi Literature Prize in 2016, and the book of poetry Kendini Tutan Su (The Water Restraining Itself from Flowing).

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

“Muzaffer ve Muz” © Yalçın Tosun. First published by Words Without Borders in 2017. Translation © 2017 by Abby Comstock-Gay. All rights reserved. Used by permission of the author.

“Take Pills and Wait for Hips” by Anya Johanna DeNiro. First published in Catapult. Copyright © 2018 by Anya Johanna DeNiro. Used by permission of the author.

“Goodbye to the Road Not Taken” was 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.