It's an evening of Selected Shorts you won't hear on public radio. We're showcasing amazing stories that, due to language issues or content advisories, are, well, too hot for radio! Join host Andy Richter and guest actors Paget Brewster, Mary Lynn Rajskub and Baron Vaughn as they read aloud humorous and saucy stories that are just a little too edgy for that hour on Sunday following Car Talk. Selected Shorts is a radio show and podcast broadcast on more than 150 stations around the country. The series began in 1985 and enjoys sold-out performances to this day. Selected Shorts was conceived with a simple premise: take great stories by well-known and emerging writers and have them performed by terrific actors of stage and screen. Featuring stories around a lively theme, the favorite works of a guest author, or a special collaboration, each Selected Shorts event is a unique night of literature in performance.
($45, 21+)
Due to a change in schedule, Tony Hale will no longer be appearing. Andy Richter has been added.
Hosted by Andy Richter
"Cookie Monster Shares" by James Hannaham, performed by Baron Vaughn
"The Secret Meeting of the Women's Club" by Jen Spyra, performed by Mary Lynn Rajskub
"The Squirrel and the Chipmunk" by David Sedaris, performed Baron Vaughn
"Variations on the Same" by Erin Somers, performed by Paget Brewster and Andy Richter
Author Bios
James Hannaham is a writer, performer, and visual artist. His debut novel, God Says No, was a Lambda Literary Award finalist. His novel Delicious Foods won the PEN/Faulkner Award and the Hurston/Wright Legacy Award, and was named one of Publishers Weekly's top ten books of the year. Hannaham has published fiction in One Story, Fence, StoryQuarterly, BOMB, and Ploughshares. He is a professor in the writing program at the Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, New York. Hannaham’s most recent published work is the 2022 novel Didn't Nobody Give a Shit What Happened to Carlotta.
David Sedaris is a humorist, author, comedian, and radio contributor. He is theauthor of Calypso, Theft By Finding, Let's Explore Diabetes with Owls, Squirrel Seeks Chipmunk, When You Are Engulfed in Flames, Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim, Me Talk Pretty One Day, Holidays on Ice, Naked, and Barrel Fever. He is also the editor of Children Playing Before a Statue of Hercules: An Anthology of Outstanding Stories. Sedaris’s pieces appear regularly in The New Yorker and have twice been included in The Best American Essays. His original radio pieces can be heard on This American Life, and he is a regular contributor to BBC Radio 4. Sedaris and his sister Amy have collaborated on several plays under the name “The Talent Family,” including Stump the Host, Stitches, One Woman Shoe, which received an Obie Award, Incident at Cobbler’s Knob, and The Book of Liz. In 2013, A feature film adaptation of his story “C.O.G.” premiered at the Sundance Film Festival, and the art book David Sedaris Diaries: A Visual Compendium was published in 2017. His essay collection Happy-Go-Lucky was published this past May.
Erin Somers is the author of the novel Stay Up with Hugo Best. Her writing has appeared in The New Yorker, The Paris Review, The New York Times, GQ, Ploughshares, American Short Fiction, McSweeney's, and elsewhere.
Jen Spyra is a former staff writer for The Late Show with Stephen Colbert and The Onion. Her writing has appeared in The New Yorker, The New York Times, McSweeney's, The Wall Street Journal, The Daily Beast, and elsewhere. Spyra’s debut short story collection Big Time was published in 2021.
Credits:
“Variations on the Same” by Erin Somers, originally appeared on Oprah Daily (May 2021). Copyright © 2021 by Erin Somers. Used by permission of the author.
“The Squirrel and the Chipmunk” by David Sedaris. Copyright © 2010 by David Sedaris. Read and broadcast with the permission of Don Congdon Associates, Inc.
“Cookie Monster Shares” by James Hannaham, originally appeared on Ploughshares (2019). Copyright © 2019 by James Hannaham. Used by permission of the author.
“The Secret Meeting of the Women’s Club” by Jen Spyra, from Big Time (Random House, March 2021). Copyright © 2021 by Jen Spyra. Used by permission of the author.
