Selected Shorts: The Most of Nora Ephron, hosted by Meg Wolitzer

Selected Shorts: The Most of Nora Ephron, hosted by Meg Wolitzer is a single evening of literature in performance at Symphony Space on the Upper West Side. Actors read aloud from the essays and fiction of Nora Ephron, and the evening marks the re-release of her book The Most of Nora Ephron. It is a literary reading rather than a staged play, and it has one performance only.

Symphony Space, a nonprofit performing arts organization, produces the evening as part of its Selected Shorts series, in which stage, screen and comedy actors perform writers' short fiction.

Ephron was a New York City native who lived from 1941 to 2012. A journalist, essayist, novelist, playwright, screenwriter and film director, she made her name with the Esquire essay A Few Words About Breasts. The program is described as a mix of her best-known essays and her fiction.

Her books include the essay collection Crazy Salad (1975) and the novel Heartburn (1983), drawn from her marriage to Carl Bernstein. The Most of Nora Ephron appeared in 2013, the year after her death. Many listeners know her from film: she wrote When Harry Met Sally... (1989) and directed Sleepless in Seattle (1993).

Selected Shorts programs are usually built around a theme, with guest hosts, often writers, frequently choosing what is read; here the focus is one author. Live readings in the series are recorded for public radio and the podcast, so the audience becomes part of the recording. Symphony Space also sells a livestream ticket for watching online.

Symphony Space grew out of a free day-long Bach marathon, Wall to Wall Bach, that its founders staged in the Symphony Theatre in 1978. The Selected Shorts stage show began in 1985. The Peter Jay Sharp Theatre, where this evening takes place, opened in 1918 as the Symphony Theatre.