Stories we loved & performed for you

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.)