Please join us for an evening of short readings from the inaugural group of The Stephen and Tabitha King Foundation's Writers’ Residency. Gemma Sieff, Anthony Varallo, and Melinda Moustakis will read their fiction, and Michael Shayan will read from a new play—light food and drink provided for attendees.

This will be the first in a series of readings from the residency program. More information will be available at the event.

About the writers who will be reading

Gemma Sieff has worked on the editorial staff at the New York Review of Books, Harper’s, Town & Country, and Bookforum, and written for Harper’s, the New York Times, The Paris Review, n+1, Bookforum, Town & Country, The New Republic, VICE, Interview, ARTnews, and Frieze. She received her MFA in fiction from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop in 2021, where she was awarded the New Zealand Fellowship, and was a resident at Yaddo in 2024. Her novel Dear Charlie will be published by FSG next year. She lives in Brooklyn.

Anthony Varallo is the author of What Did You Do Today?, winner of the 2023 Katherine Anne Porter Prize in Short Fiction (University of North Texas Press), as well as a novel, First Everything, forthcoming from Braddock Avenue Books in 2027. His other books include a novel, The Lines (University of Iowa Press), as well as four previous short story collections: This Day in History, winner of the John Simmons Short Fiction Award; Out Loud, winner of the Drue Heinz Literature Prize; Think of Me and I’ll Know (Northwestern University Press); and Everyone Was There, winner of the Elixir Press Fiction Award. He is a professor of English at the College of Charleston in Charleston, SC, where he teaches in the MFA Program in Creative Writing.

Michael Shayan is an Emmy Award-nominated, Harvard trained, queer Iranian-American writer, performer and illusionist. Following sold out, record-breaking runs in Chicago, DC, Denver and LA, Shayan's acclaimed solo play Avaaz is currently on national tour. Directed by Tony-nominee Moritz von Stuelpnagel (HAND TO GOD), with a Tony and Emmy-winning creative team, Shayan embodies his larger-than-life mother's epic journey from Tehran to "Tehran-geles," CA. The play received three Helen Hayes Awards nominations in 2025, including Outstanding Lead Performer and Outstanding Production. Recognized by NBC as a “rising star in comedy,” Shayan was recently profiled in the LA Times and honored in Out Magazine’s prestigious OUT100 list of the year’s “most impactful and influential LGBTQ+ visionaries.” He was a nominated writer and Consulting Producer for the Emmy Award-winning “The Book of Queer” (MAX) and got his start in television on the Emmy- winning “We’re Here” (MAX). His new comedy CRUISING will world premiered on Audible in 2025, directed by Tony Award-nominee Robert O’Hara (SLAVE PLAY) and starring Christine Baranski, Tituss Burgess, Cecily Strong, Andrew Rannells and Andre De Shields. A Fellow with the Sundance Institute and Lambda Literary, Shayan’s plays have been produced and developed at Chicago Shakespeare, South Coast Repertory, Denver Center for the Performing Arts, the Geffen Playhouse, The Olney Theatre, New York Stage and Film, and Rattlestick, among others. His distinctive and innovative comedy has reached millions on social media. At age 13, he was the youngest member and performer in the history of the Hollywood Magic Castle.

Melinda Moustakis is the author of the novel Homestead, a Great Reads selection for the state of Alaska for the National Book Festival and a finalist for the Colorado State Book Award, and the collection Bear Down, Bear North: Alaska Stories which won the Flannery O’Connor Award and was a 5 Under 35 selection by the National Book Foundation. Her stories have appeared in Granta, American Short Fiction, the O.Henry Prize Collection Series, and elsewhere. She holds an MA from UC Davis and PhD from Western Michigan University. She is the recipient of the Hodder Fellowship from The Lewis Center of the Arts at Princeton University, the NEA Literature Fellowship in Fiction, the Kenyon Review Fellowship at Kenyon College, the Jenny McKean Moore Fellowship at George Washington University, and the Rona Jaffe Cullman Fellowship at the New York Public Library.