Steve Almond is the author of a dozen books of fiction and nonfiction, including All The Secrets of The World and the New York Times bestsellers Candyfreak and Against Football. His essays and reviews have been published in venues ranging from the New York Times Magazine to Ploughshares to Poets & Writers, and his short fiction has appeared in Best American Short Stories, The Pushcart Prize, Best American Mysteries, and Best American Erotica.Almond is the recipient of a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts and co-hosted the Dear Sugars podcast with Cheryl Strayed for four years. He teaches at the Nieman Foundation for Journalism, and lives outside Boston with his family, his debt, and his anxiety. His latest book, Truth Is the Arrow, Mercy Is the Bow: A DIY Manual for the Construction of Stories, was published in April.
Phil LaMarr is best known as an original cast member on Mad TV and for his prolific voice acting career across dozens of series, including Futurama, Watchmen: Chapter 1, Static Shock, Samurai Jack, Justice League, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Young Justice, Star Wars: The Clone Wars, The Loud House, and Craig of the Creek, among others. Additional film and television credits include Pulp Fiction, Curb Your Enthusiasm, Veep, Get Shorty, Lucifer, Supergirl, Incredibles 2, and The Book of Boba Fett.
Tony Hale is a two-time Emmy Award–winning actor known for his work on Arrested Development, Veep, The Mysterious Benedict Society, Being the Ricardos, Hocus Pocus 2, and Toy Story 4. Hale can currently be seen in Netflix’s limited series The Decameron, and recently produced his first feature, Sketch, which will be released in 2024. He also co-wrote the children’s book Archibald’s Next Big Thing, which later became an animated series on Netflix and Peacock.
Rivers Solomon writes about life in the margins, where they are much at home. In addition to appearing on the Stonewall Honor List and winning a Firecracker Award, Solomon's debut novel, An Unkindness of Ghosts, was a finalist for Lambda, Hurston/Wright, Otherwise (formerly Tiptree), and Locus Awards. Solomon's second book, The Deep, based on the Hugo-nominated song by the Daveed Diggs–fronted hip-hop group clipping, was the winner of the 2020 Lambda Award and was short-listed for the Nebula, Locus, Hugo, Ignyte, Brooklyn Library Literary, British Fantasy, and World Fantasy Awards. Their work appears in Black Warrior Review, The New York Times, The New York Times Magazine, Guernica, Best American Short Stories, Tor.com, Best American Horror and Dark Fantasy, and elsewhere. A refugee of the transatlantic slave trade, Solomon was born on Turtle Island but currently resides on an isle in an archipelago off the western coast of the Eurasian continent. Their novel, Model Home, will be published in October.
TL Thompson is a non-binary actor who has performed on stages across New York City including productions of Lessons in Survival and Is this a Room? at the Vineyard, My H8 Letter to the Gr8 American Theatre at the Public, Nervous System at BAM, Taylor Mac’s 24 Decade History of Popular Music at St. Ann’s Warehouse, Crooked Parts at Cherry Lane, Straight White Men on Broadway, Waafrika 123 with the National Queer Theatre, Galatea with Red Bull, Dutch Kings with Brave New World, and many more. On screen, Thompson was a series regular on CW’s 4400, and has been featured on the webseries These/Thems and Dinette, and the films Friday Afternoon, Separation/Celebration, and Flu$h.
Alexander Weinstein is the author of the short story collections Universal Love and Children of the New World, which was named a notable book of the year by The New York Times, NPR and Electric Literature. He is a recipient of a Sustainable Arts Foundation Award, and his stories and interviews have appeared in Rolling Stone,World Literature Today, Best American Science Fiction & Fantasy, and Best American Experimental Writing. His short story “Saying Goodbye to Yang” was adapted into the film After Yang. Weinstein is the director of the Martha’s Vineyard Institute of Creative Writing and a Professor of Creative Writing at Siena Heights University.
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
“A Happy Dream” by Steve Almond, from The Evil B.B. Chow and Other Stories (Algonquin Books, 2005). Copyright © 2005 by Steve Almond. Used by permission of the author.
“A Brief Note on the Translation of Winter Women, Written by the Collective Dead, Translated by Amal Ruth” by Rivers Solomon 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.
