Clarke Peters (born April 7, 1952) is an American actor, singer, writer and director best known for his roles as Detective Lester Freamon and Albert "Big Chief" Lambreaux, on the HBO dramas The Wire and Treme respectively.

Peters was born Peter Clarke as the second of four sons in New York City and grew up in Englewood, New Jersey. At the age of twelve, he had his first theater experience, in a school production of My Fair Lady. He began to have serious ambitions to work in the theater at the age of 14. He graduated from Dwight Morrow High School in 1970.^{[citation needed]}

Shortly before he left the United States, he was arrested, but then later cleared, after an anti-Vietnam war demonstration for obstructing police lines. He later said of this experience: "It made me more angry than anything else, because what I experienced was how impotent you could be as an American citizen."

In 1971, Peters' elder brother enabled him to work as a costume designer for a production of the musical Hair in Paris, in which he later starred. While there, he received a letter from the FBI that accused him of draft evasion. When he went to New Jersey to contest his charge, he said "if the enemy comes to America, I'll be there, but I don't know the Vietnamese. If you put me in the army, I'm not going there."

Lawrence "Larry" Cecil Adler (February 10, 1914 – August 6, 2001) was an American musician, widely acknowledged as one of the world's most skilled harmonica players. Composers such as Ralph Vaughan Williams, Malcolm Arnold, Darius Milhaud and Arthur Benjamin composed works for him. During the later stage of his career he was known for his collaborations with popular musicians Sting, Elton John, Kate Bush, and Cerys Matthews.

Adler was born in Baltimore, Maryland, into a Jewish family and graduated from the Baltimore City College high school. Adler taught himself harmonica (which he preferred to call a mouth-organ) and began playing professionally at the age of 14. In 1927, the harmonica was popular enough that the Baltimore Sun newspaper sponsored a contest. His rendering of a Beethoven minuet won him the award, and a year later, he ran away from home to New York. After being referred by Rudy Vallée, Adler got his first theatre work, and caught the attention of orchestra leader Paul Ash, who placed Adler in a vaudeville act as "a ragged urchin, playing for pennies". From there, he was hired by Florenz Ziegfeld and then by Lew Leslie (again as an urchin). Adler finally broke the typecasting and appeared in a dinner jacket in the 1934 Paramount film Many Happy Returns, and was hired by British theatrical producer C. B. Cochran to perform in a London revue. Adler found stardom in the United Kingdom and the British Empire, where, it has been written, harmonica sales increased twenty-fold and 300,000 people joined fan clubs.".

Lester Freamon is a fictional character on the HBO drama The Wire, played by actor Clarke Peters. Freamon is a detective in the Baltimore Police Department's Major Crimes Unit. He is a wise, methodical detective who makes major contributions to the series investigations.

Detective Lester Freamon is a veteran of the force who established a reputation as what Bunk Moreland called "natural police" for his instincts, tenacity and intelligence. Before joining the force he served in the military. It is revealed in season 2 that he had fought in the Vietnam War. His first major unit was Homicide, but in 1989, acting against the orders of the Deputy Commissioner, he charged a politically-connected fence to coerce his testimony in a homicide case. Though the case was successfully closed, the Deputy still had Freamon transferred to the Pawnshop unit as a punishment – after being told by Freamon that that was the one place he did not want to go. Freamon eventually spent thirteen years (and four months) in the assignment, until he had been completely forgotten by management. Deskbound for more than a decade, Freamon began making dollhouse furniture, a hobby which provides him with a substantial supplemental income, but also contributes to his eccentric reputation among fellow police. At the end of the series it was revealed that Freamon had joined the department in 1974 or 1975, having worked 32½ years at his retirement. Coincidentally, Freamon had joined the department around the same time as ousted commanders Commissioner Ervin Burrell and Major Howard "Bunny" Colvin (both of whom joined in 1973) yet had never obtained rank, focusing solely on police work.

Wendell Pierce (born December 8, 1962) is an American actor, best known for his work in HBO dramas, including his portrayal of Detective Bunk Moreland in The Wire and trombonist Antoine Batiste in Treme.

Pierce was born in New Orleans, Louisiana, possibly in 1962, possibly in 1963 (according to IMDB.com) where he attended Benjamin Franklin High School.

He the attended the Juilliard School's Drama Division (Group 14: 1981–1985) where he graduated with a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in 1985.

Pierce starred in all five seasons of the HBO drama The Wire as Detective Bunk Moreland. He was nominated for an NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Drama Series for the role in 2007.

Pierce also played a crooked policeman on Third Watch named Conrad "Candyman" Jones. Outside of shooting The Wire, Pierce managed to pick up a recurring role as an FBI clinical psychologist in Numb3rs. An interview with him is featured in Spike Lee's 2006 HBO documentary When the Levees Broke, regarding the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. His latest role is in HBO's Treme, created by David Simon, creator of The Wire. Pierce plays Antoine Batiste, a trombone player, for which he took lessons in trombone.

Michael Chabon ( /ˈʃeɪbɒn/ SHAY-bon; born May 24, 1963) is an American author and "one of the most celebrated writers of his generation," according to The Virginia Quarterly Review.

Chabon's first novel, The Mysteries of Pittsburgh (1988), was published when he was 25 and catapulted him to literary celebrity. He followed it with a second novel, Wonder Boys (1995), and two short-story collections. In 2000, Chabon published The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay, a critically acclaimed novel that John Leonard, in a 2007 review of a later novel, called Chabon's magnum opus. It received the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 2001 (see: 2001 in literature).

His novel The Yiddish Policemen's Union, an alternate history mystery novel, was published in 2007 to enthusiastic reviews and won the Hugo, Sidewise, Nebula and Ignotus awards; his serialized novel Gentlemen of the Road appeared in book form in the fall of that same year.

His work is characterized by complex language, the frequent use of metaphor along with recurring themes, including nostalgia, divorce, abandonment, fatherhood, and most notably issues of Jewish identity. He often includes gay, bisexual, and Jewish characters in his work. Since the late 1990s, Chabon has written in an increasingly diverse series of styles for varied outlets; he is a notable defender of the merits of genre fiction and plot-driven fiction, and, along with novels, he has published screenplays, children's books, comics, and newspaper serials.