Look out for MCW alumni work in your feed this summer: TV series Shōgun (FX) and Fallout (Prime Video), and podcast Pack One Bag (Lemonade Media).

Shōgun, a new series co-created by Rachel Kondo (MCW 2016) and based on the bestselling novel by James Clavell, is now streaming on FX. The series is “set in Japan in the year 1600, at the dawn of a century-defining civil war. ‘Lord Yoshii Toranaga’ (Hiroyuki Sanada) is fighting for his life as his enemies on the Council of Regents unite against him, when a mysterious European ship is found marooned in a nearby fishing village” –FX. Shōgun has been renewed for a second season.

Fallout, a post-apocalyptic drama based on the video game franchise of the same name, was released in April and has amassed millions of viewers on Amazon Prime Video, making it the second most-watched title in Prime history. Kieran Fitzgerald (MCW 2010) is a writer for the show and wrote Episode 4, “The Ghouls.” Fallout has been renewed for Season 2.

Pack One Bag, a new Tribeca-winning podcast by documentarian David Modigliani (MCW 2007) featuring Stanley Tucci, explores the “epic true story of an Italian family, split apart by love, fascism and war.” The 10-part series premieres June 5th.

Michener Center Fellow Darius Atefat-Peckham has been named a runner-up for the 2024 UT Keene Prize for Literature, for an excerpt from his forthcoming book of poetry, Book of Kin.

The Keene Prize, named for E. L. Keene, a 1942 graduate of the University of Texas at Austin, is open to all UT students and is meant to support the pursuit of great American writing. The award for this year’s prize was $70,000, with three runners-up receiving $40,000 each.

Laurel Faye, a graduate student in the New Writers Project, was awarded the grand prize for her novel excerpt “Seal, Wife.” In addition to Atefat-Peckham, other runners-up included Ira James Goga and Kyle Okeke.

The poems in Book of Kin follow a boy’s coming of age in the aftermath of a car accident that took the lives of his mother and brother, Susan and Cyrus Atefat-Peckham. Inspired by the Persian epic The Book of Kings, the Sufi mystic poetry of Rumi, and his mother’s poetry, these poems form a path of connection between the author and his Iranian heritage. Book of Kin interrogates what it means to exist between cultures, to be a survivor of tragedy, to practice love and joy toward one’s beloveds, and to hope for greater connection.

Book of Kin is forthcoming from Autumn House Press in October 2024.

Michener Center Playwriting Alumnus Abe Koogler‘s play Staff Meal has opened to rave reviews, with recent coverage from The New York Times, Vulture, Observer, New York Theatre Guide, and New York Stage Review.

Writing for Vulture, Sara Holdren calls Staff Meal “a quietly surreal shapeshifter of a play with a tilted sense of humor and a generous, sorrowful heart.”

“Staff Meal feels like a portal,” Holdren writes. “We tumble through its funny, eerie evocation of the moment that made—is still making—our present, and we come out the other side feeling, for all its ebb toward emptiness, full.”

Staff Meal is at Playwrights Horizons through May 19.