Anton Chekhov (1860-1904), short-story writer, playwright and physician, is considered to be one of the greatest short-story writers in world literature. Vladimir Nobokov, among many others, felt “The Lady with the Dog” one of the best short stories ever written. Chekhov wrote four full-length plays, “The Seagull,” “Uncle Vanya,” “Three Sisters” and “The Cherry Orchard,” and numerous short plays. But he made his living as a doctor. "Medicine is my lawful wife," he once said, "and literature is my mistress." As both a storywriter and a playwright, Chekhov challenged audiences (and actors) because of his departure from conventional plot, dialogue and action. He abandoned what some have called the “event plot” or “heroic plot” in favor of words and actions that mask the characters’ true feelings. "Chekhov often expressed his thought not in speeches," wrote Stanislavski, "but in pauses, or between the lines, or in replies consisting of a single word… the characters often feel and think things not expressed in the lines they speak.” Nobokov described Chekhov as writing "the way one person relates to another the most important things in his life, slowly and yet without a break, in a slightly subdued voice.” Chekhov is now the most popular playwright in the English-speaking world after Shakespeare—which is saying something since he temporarily gave up play writing after his first play, “The Seagull,” was roundly panned by critics during its first production. Fortunately, he later returned to it, and by the time he died, his reputation was well established. Nonetheless, shortly before he died he mentioned to a friend that he thought people might go on reading him for seven years. . . Sarah Ruhl (born 1974) gained widespread recognition for her play “The Clean House,” which was a Pulitzer Prize finalist in 2005. Her play “Eurydice” recently finished an extended run at New York's Second Stage Theatre. Prior to that it had seen stagings at Yale Rep, Berkeley Rep, and Circle X Theatre. Her play “Dead Man's Cell Phone” recently finished an extended run at New York's Playwrights Horizons theater in a production starring Mary-Louise Parker. It premiered at Washington D.C.'s Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company in 2007. Other plays include the Passion Play cycle that opened at Washington's Arena Stage in 2005, “Orlando,” “Late: A Cowboy Song,” and “Demeter in the City.” In September, 2006, Ruhl won a MacArthur Fellowship. In the announcement of that award, she was described this way: "Sarah Ruhl, 32, playwright, New York City. She is a playwright creating vivid and adventurous theatrical works that poignantly juxtapose the mundane aspects of daily life with mythic themes of love and war."