Stories we loved & performed for you

BY JONATHAN LETHEM

Celebrated for his novels, short stories and essays, Jonathan Lethem is recognized today as one of America’s foremost contemporary writers. His works include nine novels, five short-story collections, six non-fiction books and an array of essays published in such publications as Rolling Stone, Harper’s and The New Yorker. His novel Motherless Brooklyn was named Novel of the Year by Esquire magazine and won the National Book Critics Circle Award and the Salon Book Award, as well as the Macallan Crime Writers Association Gold Dagger. He received a MacArthur Fellowship in 2005. (PHOTO: Emily Ristine, Morgan Morton and Allen Sledge took turns “pitching” Hempel’s piece.)

BY SARAH WANG

Sarah Wang is a writer, editor, and Adjunct Assistant Professor at Barnard whose writing across genres focuses on mass incarceration, psychoanalysis, surveillance, colonized bodies, contemporary art, class, and race. Her writing has appeared in the London Review of Books, The Nation, The New Republic, Harper's Bazaar, n+1, BOMB, The Los Angeles Review of Books, American Short Fiction, the Believer, McSweeneys, Joyland, Catapult, semiotext(e)’s Animal Shelter, among other publications. She has been awarded fellowships from PEN America, the Center for Fiction, the Asian American Writers' Workshop, and Kundiman. She is a Tin House Scholar, a Sewanee Writers’ Conference Tennessee Williams Scholar, a Mendocino Coast Writers’ Conference Frances Andrews Scholar, and the winner of a Nelson Algren prize for fiction.

BY HUGH BEHM-STEINBERG

Hugh Behm-Steinberg is a poet and short fiction writer. He teaches courses in creative writing and literature at the California College of the Arts. His books of poetry include Shy Green Fields (No Tell Books, 2007) and The Opposite of Work (JackLeg Press, 2012), as well as three Dusie chapbooks, Sorcery (2007), Good Morning! (2011) and The Sound of Music (2015).  In 2015 his short story "Taylor Swift" won the Barthelme Prize for short fiction, and his story "Goodwill" was picked as one of the Wigleaf Top Fifty Very Short Fictions of 2018. In 2020, Nomadic Press published his collection of microfiction, Animal Children. (PHOTO: Morgan Morton performed Behm-Steinberg’s robot-riddled frenemy story.)

BY AMY HEMPEL

Amy Hempel is the author of Sing to It, The Dog of the Marriage, Tumble Home, At the Gates of the Animal Kingdom, Reasons to Live, and the coeditor of Unleashed. Her stories have appeared in Harper’s, Vanity Fair, GQ, Tin House, The Harvard Review, The Quarterly, and have been widely anthologized, including Best American Short Stories and The Best Nonrequired Reading. She teaches in the Graduate Writing Program at Bennington College, and at Stony Brook Southampton. She lives near New York City. (PHOTO: Emily Ristine performed this poolside gem.)

BY KAREN E. BENDER

Karen E. Bender is the author of the story collection Refund, published by Counterpoint Press in 2015; it was a Finalist for the National Book Award in Fiction; it was also on the shortlist for the Frank O’Connor International Short Story Prize, and the Longlist for the Story Prize. It was also a Los Angeles Times bestseller. Her collection The New Order was on the Longlist for the Story Prize. She is also the author of the novels Like Normal People (Houghton Mifflin). Her third collection of stories, The Words of Dr. L, was published by Counterpoint Press in May 2025. (PHOTO: Constance Macy performed the roles of wife, husband, children and cat in Bender’s What the Cat Said.)

REBECCA MAKKAI

Rebecca Makkai is the author of the New York Times bestselling I Have Some Questions For You as well as four other works of fiction. Her last novel, The Great Believers, One of the New York Times’ Best Books of the 21st Century, was a finalist for both the 2019 Pulitzer Prize and the 2018 National Book Award, and was the winner of the ALA Carnegie Medal and the LA Times Book Prize among other honors. A 2022 Guggenheim Fellow, Rebecca teaches graduate fiction writing at Middlebury College, Northwestern University, and the Bennington Writing Seminars, and she is Artistic Director of StoryStudio Chicago. (PHOTO: Ryan Artzberger wore many hats in his reading of Makkai’s A Story for Your Daughter, a Story for Your Sons.)

AIMEE BENDER

Aimee Bender is the author of six books: The Girl in the Flammable Skirt (1998), which was a NY Times Notable Book; An Invisible Sign of My Own (2000), which was an L.A. Times pick of the year; Willful Creatures (2005), which was nominated by The Believer as one of the best books of the year; The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake (2010), which won the SCIBA award for best fiction and an Alex Award; The Color Master, a NY Times Notable book for 2013; and her latest novel, The Butterfly Lampshade, which came out in July 2020, and was longlisted for the PEN/Jean Stein Award. Her books have been translated into sixteen languages. (PHOTO: Diane Timmerman performed a most complicated woman in Bender’s The Meeting.)

BY TOBIAS WOLFF

Tobias Wolff is the author of the novels The Barracks Thief and Old School, the memoirs This Boy's Life and In Pharaoh's Army, and the short story collections In the Garden of the North American Martyrs, Back in the World, and The Night in Question. His most recent collection of short stories, Our Story Begins, won The Story Prize for 2008. Other honors include the PEN/Malamud Award and the Rea Award — both for excellence in the short story — the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, and the PEN/Faulkner Award. He has also been the editor of Best American Short Stories, The Vintage Book of Contemporary American Short Stories, and A Doctor's Visit: The Short Stories of Anton Chekhov. His work appears regularly in The New Yorker, The Atlantic, Harper's and other magazines and literary journals. Since 1997, he has taught at Stanford University. (PHOTO: No one was hurt in Clay Mabbitt’s performance of Wolff’s Bullet in the Brain.)

BY ERIN SOMERS

Erin Somers is a writer, reporter, and book critic based in the Hudson Valley. Her fiction, essays, and criticism have appeared in The New York Times Magazine, The New Yorker, The Paris Review, Esquire, GQ, The Nation, The New Republic, Best American Short Stories, and elsewhere. Her first novel, Stay Up With Hugo Best (2019), was a Vogue Magazine Best Book of the Year. Her second novel, The Ten Year Affair, will be published by Simon & Schuster on October 21, 2025, and is available for preorder from your favorite bookseller. (PHOTO: Bridget Haight conjured the lusty protagonist in Somers’ The Ten Year Affair — with Dan Barden listening close by.)

BY ETGAR KERET

Etgar Keret was born in 1967 in Ramat Gan, Israel. The author of books, novels and short stories is one of the leading writers of contemporary Israeli literature. His works have been translated into 49 languages worldwide and have won numerous awards: the Book Publishers Association’s Platinum Prize several times, the Jewish Quarterly Wingate Prize (UK, 2008), the Charles Bronfman Prize in recognition of his work imparting an inspiring Jewish humanitarian vision (2017) and the Sapir Prize (2018), Israel’s most prestigious literary award, for his latest book Fly Already (original title: תקלה בקצה הגלקסיה), which has also been shortlisted as one of the best books of 2019 by the Financial Times and the New York Public Library. (PHOTO: Bill Simmons had us questioning what love looks like during his performance of Keret’s Fatso.)