It feels like the last two years have been about the things we long for and the things we wish would just disappear.

On the next selected shorts, we've got stories of love and haunting that all of us can relate to.

Join me, Meg Wallitzer, performers including Cynthia Nixon and the host of WNYC's All of It, Alison Stewart, coming up next.

You're listening to selected shorts, where our greatest actors transport us through the magic of fiction. One short story at a time.

Sure, we all love to hear ourselves talk, which is why I, oh so cleverly, got myself a Radio Show and podcast.

But after a while, it gets boring listening to yourself unspool the same old stories, like the one about how you were once in an elevator with Dr. Ruth and asked her a very personal question just as the doors opened.

Or how weirdly, the only two famous people whose last names are Kilmer are men with female first names, the poet Joyce Kilmer and the actor Val Kilmer, just saying.

Well, we had selected shorts like to get out of our heads sometimes and partner with other like-minded people who celebrate great writing.

We recently invited the host of the Radio Show All of It, Alison Stewart, to help us curate an evening of stories.

If you don't know, all of it, it's a popular culture driven show made by New York's public radio station WNYC every weekday.

For our night with Stewart at our home theater Symphony Space, we put our heads together and picked an exciting cross section of established authors and younger rising ones.

In the next hour, we'll hear those stories and excerpts of a conversation I had with Stewart about her insights into these authors.

Like all of us at selected shorts, Stewart reads a lot. She's drawn to a diverse roster of writers, does countless author interviews, and is really a fanatical booster of literature.

As I like to put it, she wears the sandwich board for fiction.

There's something about fiction and going into another world. I really admire fiction writers who world build, and as just a fan of fiction, I love being taken somewhere.

How did you decide which stories to pick? What made these stand out for you?

You know, it was more the authors than even the stories, if I can be completely frank.

Yeah, please.

That the authors of these short stories, I think each have such a distinct voice.

They are each, this is going to sound so cheesy.

They're each people I'd like to have a glass of wine with.

And note to self, be someone that Allison Stewart wants to have a glass of wine with and note to all authors out there.

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