Francine Prose is acclaimed for creating satirical worlds of absurd situations, sardonic humor, intelligence, compassion, and grief. An acclaimed novelist, critic, and essayist, she is the author of 16 novels, including the National Book Award finalist Blue Angel and, most recently, Lovers at the Chameleon Club, Paris 1932. A former President of the PEN American Center and the recipient of a Guggenheim fellowship and a Fulbright fellowship, Prose has also written three short-story collections, a children’s picture book, and eight nonfiction works. Mister Monkey weaves the darkly funny tale of an off-off-off-off Broadway children’s musical as told from several dizzyingly unreliable viewpoints.

Rabih Alameddine was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award and the National Book Award for his novel An Unnecessary Woman, a “paean to the transformative power of reading” (LA Review of Books). In addition to authoring several other novels and a collection of short stories, he was the recipient of a Guggenheim fellowship and has had solo gallery exhibitions of his paintings on three continents. Alameddine was born in Jordan to Lebanese parents and was educated in America and England. In his new novel, a gay Middle Eastern man reflects on the defining events of his life during a night in a psych clinic waiting room.