Selected Shorts

Host Meg Wolitzer presents two works about losing something, but finding something revealing to take its place.  In “Light,” by Lesley Nkeka Arimah, parents differ about how to raise a strong-willed daughter.  The reader is Crystal Dickinson.  And in Taryn Bowe’s “Camp Emeline,” performed by Edie Falco, a family struggles after a loss, but grief leads to self-discovery for the determined narrator. This lovely work also introduces S...

Host Meg Wolitzer presents three works that contemplate a way out—of our lives, and even of this world.  In Joe Meno’s “Books You Read,” performed by Joan Allen, a young boy helps his jaded teacher to love reading again.  J. Robert Lennon takes us into deep space and a conversation between a computer and a survivor in “Escape Pod W41,” performed by Stephen Lang.  A composition created by Lakecia Benjamin in response to the story, a...

Host Meg Wolitzer presents three works from an evening with author and New Yorker cartoonist Roz Chast, inspired by Chast’s new book I Must be Dreaming. “The Wife on Ambien,” by Ed Park, is a sort of late-night fever dream. It’s read by John Fugelsang. In Tessa Hadley’s “Bad Dreams,” images that begin in books envelop a family in real life. The reader is Rita Wolf. Tom Barbash’s “Stay Up With Me” charts the rocky path of an old lov...

This story was read at a Selected Shorts show in L.A., hosted by the Getty Center, and co-produced with the Belletrist Book Club, the online reading community created by longtime friends and readers Emma Roberts and Karah Preiss.  Jones-Yelvington is an artist and drag performer who is also a prolific writer. They have written chapbooks, a memoir, a young adult novel and two collections of short fiction, Don't Make Me Do Something ...

Host Meg Wolitzer presents three works that offer unusual perspectives on clothes and fashion—selling, making, and coveting. In Anne Enright’s “(She Owns) Everything,” read by Mary-Louise Parker, a saleswoman becomes a compulsive consumer. In “Clothes on the Ground: A Conversation with Leap,” we hear from a Cambodian garment worker, interviewed by Julia Wallace for the compendium Women in Clothes. Leap is voiced by Jennifer Lim. An...

Host Meg Wolitzer presents two unconventional love stories, one classic, one contemporary, that avoid the usual tropes of “meet cute,” “opposites attract,” or “happily ever after” but are still engaging.  In “Love in the Slump,” by Evelyn Waugh, clueless upper-crust newlyweds are sent on a comic odyssey.  The reader is Jane Kaczmarek.  And Esther Yi’s “Moon” explores something we often mistake for love—obsession, as a young woman i...

Guest host Jane Kaczmarek presents two stories from the Best American Short Stories 2021 anthology selected by guest editor Jesmyn Ward. Both involve adolescents facing displacement or rejection, but the stories are set in very different environments: One takes place in a surreal, Soviet-occupied Afghanistan, and one inside a junior high school in Tennessee.  First, Leo Solomon reads “Playing Metal Gear Solid: The Phantom Pain,” by...

This story is by the writer Erin Somers. She has a novel, Stay Up with Hugo Best, and has been published in The Paris Review, The New Yorker and elsewhere.  Performing it, we've got two actors who found the funny with both the words and each other. The first, Paget Brewster, is best known for her role on Criminal Minds. Additionally, she has appeared on Friends, Community and Comedy Central’s Another Period.  Playing off her is And...