Story/Teller with Ayad Akhtar, Aasif Mandvi, and Jennifer Egan

Featuring

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  Ayad Akhtar

  Ayad Akhtar

  Ayad Akhtar is a novelist and playwright. His work has been published and performed in over two dozen languages. He is the winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Drama and an Award in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters.

  Ayad is the author of American Dervish (Little, Brown & Co.), published in over 20 languages and named a Kirkus Reviews Best Book of 2012, as well as the forthcoming novel, Homeland Elegies (Little, Brown & Co.) in September 2020. As a playwright, he has written Junk (Lincoln Center, Broadway; Kennedy Prize for American Drama, Tony nomination); Disgraced (Lincoln Center, Broadway; Pulitzer Prize for Drama, Tony nomination); The Who & The What (Lincoln Center); and The Invisible Hand (NYTW; Obie Award, Outer Critics Circle John Gassner Award, Olivier, and Evening Standard nominations). As a screenwriter, he was nominated for an Independent Spirit Award for Best Screenplay for The War Within.

  Among other honors, Akhtar is the recipient of the Steinberg Playwrighting Award, the Nestroy Award, the Erwin Piscator Award, as well as fellowships from the American Academy in Rome, MacDowell, the Sundance Institute, and Yaddo, where he serves as a Board Director. Additionally, Ayad is a Board Trustee at PEN/America and New York Theatre Workshop.  He lives in New York City.

  Photo credit: Vincent Tullo for the New York Times.

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  Aasif Mandvi

  Aasif Mandvi

  Aasif Mandvi can currently be seen in the series This Way Up on Hulu and he is one of the stars of the upcoming CBS series EVIL (from The Good Wife creators Robert and Michelle King). The former Daily Show correspondent is also a Peabody Award winning producer, actor, writer, and comedian. Feature films include Mother’s Day, Million Dollar Arm, The Internship, The Proposal, Premium Rush, Music and Lyrics, and Ghost Town. He co-wrote and starred in the feature film Today’s Special and web series Halal in the Family (Peabody Award). Other television credits include Younger (TV Land), Shut Eye (Hulu), A Series of Unfortunate Events (Netflix), and Blue Bloods (CBS). Mandvi, starred in, produced and co-wrote on The Brink (HBO) opposite Jack Black and Tim Robbins. Stage credits include Sakina’s Restaurant (Obie Award), the Pulitzer Prize-winning play Disgraced by Ayad Akhtar at Lincoln Center (Lucille Lortell Nomination), and the Broadway revival of Oklahoma! and Brigadoon at NY City Center. He is also the author of a book of personal essays entitled No Land’s Man, published by Chronicle Books.

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  Jennifer Egan

  Jennifer Egan

  Jennifer Egan is the author of Manhattan Beach, a New York Times bestseller, and five previous books of fiction: A Visit from the Goon Squad, which won the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Critics Circle Award; The Keep; the story collection Emerald City; Look at Me, a National Book Award finalist; and The Invisible Circus. Her work has appeared in the New Yorker, Harper’s magazine, Granta, McSweeney’s, and the New York Times magazine.