Selected Shorts Creators & Guests

Cynthia Nixon is an American actress and activist best known for her role as Miranda Hobbes in the hit HBO series Sex and the City (1998-2004), for which she won a Primetime Emmy Award. She reprised the role in two film adaptations and the 2021 revival And Just Like That.... Nixon has also had a successful stage career, winning two Tony Awards for Rabbit Hole (2006) and The Little Foxes (2017). In 2018, she ran for governor of New York, emphasizing education reform and social justice.

Aparna Nancherla is a comedian and actress.

Jane Frances Kaczmarek is an actress.

Wyatt Cenac is a comedian, actor, producer, Emmy Award winning writer and host of the Selected Shorts podcast.

David Sedaris is a humorist, comedian, author, and radio contributor. He also hosts the show Selected Shorts.

Kim Fu is a writer of science fiction. They also teach writing, co-host the podcast "The Rough Puffs," and produce electronic music under the name DJ Foof.Fu's stories have appeared in the New York Times, Granta, the Atlantic, BOMB, Hazlitt, and the TLS. Their first novel, "For Today I Am a Boy," was published in 2014 and won the Edmund White Award for Debut Fiction and the Canadian Authors Association Emerging Writer Award. Their second novel, "The Lost Girls of Camp Forevermore," was published in 2018. Their third book, the collection "Lesser Known Monsters of the 21st Century," was published in 2022.Kim Fu is the author of two novels, a collection of poetry, and most recently, the story collection Lesser Known Monsters of the 21st Century, winner of the 2023 Pacific Northwest Book Award and a finalist for the 2022 Scotiabank Giller Prize. Fu has been longlisted for the 2023 Joyce Carol Oates Prize for mid-career authors.Fu’s first novel, It was also a finalist for the PEN/Hemingway Award, the Kobo Emerging Writer Prize, and the Lambda Literary Awards, as well as a New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice. Her second novel, The Lost Girls of Camp Forevermore, was a finalist for the Washington State Book Awards and the Ontario Library Association Evergreen Award.

LeVar Burton is an actor, director, educator & co-founder of the award-winning Skybrary App, host and Executive Producer of PBS's Reading Rainbow, and lifelong children's literacy advocate.

Kirsten Vangsness is an actress and writer.

Molly Bernard is an actor. She is best known for her portrayal of Lauren Heller in the television series "Younger."

Richard Bausch is an author of short stories and novels. He is also Professor in the Writing Program at Chapman University in Orange, California.Bausch's first novel, "Real Presence," was published in 1980. He has published twelve novels, eight short story collections, and one volume of poetry and prose. He co-edited or edited the 6th, 7th, and 8th editions of The Norton Anthology of Short Fiction.Bausch received his B.A. from Rhode Island University, and his M.F.A. from the Iowa Writers' Workshop at the University of Iowa.

Lesley Nneka Arimah is an author.Arimah's work has appeared in The New Yorker, Harper’s, , McSweeney’s, GRANTA, and other publications. She has received the 2015 Commonwealth Short Story Prize for Africa, the 2017 O. Henry Prize, the 2017 Kirkus Prize, and the 2019 Caine Prize for African Writing.Arimah is a 2019 United States Artists Fellow in Writing.

Julie Otsuka is an author.

Dr. Weike Wang is an author. She also teaches creative writing at the University of Pennsylvania and Barnard College.Wang's fiction has appeared in Glimmer Train, the Alaska Quarterly Review, Ploughshares, Kenyon Review, The New Yorker, and Redivider. Her first novel, "Chemistry," was published in 2017 and received the 2018 PEN/Hemingway Award. Her second novel, "Joan Is Okay," was published in 2022.Wang received her B.Sc. in Chemistry and her Ph.D. in Public Health from Harvard University, and her M.F.A. from Boston University.

Fiona McFarlane is a fiction author. She also teaches at the University of California, Berkeley.MacFarlane's stories have appeared in The New Yorker, Zoetrope: All-Story, and Best Australian Stories. Her first novel, "The Night Guest," was published in 2013 and won several prizes, including the Voss Literary Prize and a New South Wales Premier’s Award.

Souvankham Thammavongsa is a poet and short story writer.In 2019, Thammavongsa won an O. Henry Award for her short story, "Slingshot", which was published in Harper's Magazine, and in 2020 her short story collection "How to Pronounce Knife" won the Giller Prize.Thammavongsa has taught writing at Wilfrid Laurier University, University of Guelph, Wilfrid Laurier University, and University of Ottawa. She has also been a contributing editor at Brick.

Jamil Jan Kochai is an author.Kochai's first book, the novel "99 Nights in Logar," was published in 2019, and won the John C. Zacharis First Book Award from Ploughshares. His second book, the collection "his second book, called The Haunting of Hajji Hotak and Other Stories," was published in 2022.Kochai received a B.A. in English from California State University Sacramento, an M.A. in Creative Writing from the University of California Davis and a second M.A. in Creative Writing from the Iowa Writers' Workshop.

Percival Everett is a writer and Professor of English at the University of Southern California.Everett is the author of more than thirty novels and story collections. His first book, "American Desert," was published in 2004.Everett received his B.A. from the University of Miami and his M.A. in Fiction from Brown University.

Joan Delano Aiken was an author who is best known for her supernatural fiction and children's alternative history novels.In the 1950s, Aiken worked as an editor for the magazine Argosy. Her first book, the collection "All You Ever Wanted and Other Stories," was published in 1953.Aiken won several awards for her work, including the 1968 Guardian Children's Fiction Prize for "The Whispering Mountain," and the 1972 Edgar Allen Poe Award for "Night Fall.Aiken died in 2004.

Naomi Kritzer is a science fiction and fantasy writer and election blogger.Kritzer is best known for her short story "Cat Pictures Please," which won the Locus Award and Hugo Award. Her first novel, "Freedom's Gate," was published in 2004.Kritzer received her B.A. from Carleton College.