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Ready to be scared? Ready to laugh? A horror story and a funny story make up this radio program. First, from a Symphony Space evening called “Dangerous Connections” we’ll hear a story with the exotic title, “Chac-Mool,” by Carlos Fuentes, the author of more than twenty books, most recently Inez, published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux. A diplomat who has served as Mexico’s ambassador to France, he has received many awards for his accomplishments as a novelist, essayist, and commentator, among them the Cervantes Prize, the highest honor given to a Spanish-language writer.

Our reader, a newcomer to SELECTED SHORTS, is Simon Jones, who has appeared on Broadway in The Real Thing, Benefactors, Getting Married, Private Lives, The Real Inspector Hound. His film work includes Brazil, Monty Python's Meaning of Life, and Privates on Parade. He is co-artistic director of TACT (The Actors' Company Theatre). and is well-known to radio fans as the voice of Arthur Dent, the bemused hero of Douglas Adams’ A Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.

It’s tempting to say that, to public radio listeners at least, author-performer David Sedaris needs no introduction, as his side-splitting “Santaland Diaries”, heard on NPR’s Morning Edition, began a long career for this humorist in many media. Sedaris is still heard on radio, as a featured performer on Ira Glass’s This American Life. His bestselling books include BARREL FEVER, NAKED, HOLIDAY ON ICE, ME TALK PRETTY ONE DAY, and DRESS YOUR FAMILY IN CORDUROY AND DENIM from which this program’s story, “Nuit of the Living Dead,” comes. He read it during an evening at Symphony Space for which he was the SHORTS “guest-host”, and gives this classic “it was-a-dark-and-stormy-night” tale his own inimitable twist of tongue.

Carlos Fuentes, "Chac-Mool," read by Simon Jones
David Sedaris, “Nuit of the Living Dead,” read by the author