Classics with a Twist

Sara Bareilles is an award-winning singer, songwriter, actor, producer, activist, and New York Times best-selling author whose accolades to date include two Grammy Awards, three Tony Award nominations, and three Primetime Emmy Award nominations. As a recording artist and songwriter, she has sold more than 3 million albums and 15 million singles in the U.S., and her songs have been streamed more than 3.5 billion times worldwide. On Broadway, she composed music and lyrics for Waitress, stepping into the lead role both on Broadway and in the West End. Other musical theater credits include her Tony-nominated performance as The Baker’s Wife in Stephen Sondheim and James Lapine’s Into the Woods, a song on the Tony Award–nominated score for SpongeBob SquarePants, and an Emmy Award–nominated appearance as Mary Magdalene in NBC's Jesus Christ Superstar Live in Concert. Bareilles plays Dawn Solano on the Emmy-nominated musical comedy series Girls5eva on Netflix, and is currently at work on a musical theater adaptation of Meg Wolitzer’s best-selling novel The Interestings, alongside author Sarah Ruhl.

Michael Cunningham is a novelist, screenwriter, and educator. His novel The Hours received the PEN/Faulkner Award and the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1999. He has taught at Columbia University and Brooklyn College. His latest novel, Day, was published in 2023, and he is currently a professor in the practice at Yale University.

Mike Doyle has appeared on screen in New Amsterdam, City on a Hill, The Romanoffs, Law & Order: Special Victims Unit, The Accidental Wolf, Narcos: Mexico, Jersey Boys, The Invitation, Green Lantern,Fallout, The Greatest, and Law & Order among others. His stage credits include The New Century at Lincoln Center and Betrayed with the Culture Project. Doyle wrote and directed the feature films Almost Love starring Kate Walsh, Patricia Clarkson, and Scott Evans, and Passing Through, in which he also stars with Kevin Daniels and Amy Ryan. His next film, Bookends, stars F. Murray Abraham and Caroline Aaron.

Ginny Hogan is a New York City–based writer and standup comic, and author of I'm More Dateable than a Plate of Refried Beans: And Other Romantic Observations. She is also the author of Toxic Femininity in the Workplace: Office Gender Politics Are a Battlefield and Sex for Lazy People: 50 Effortless Positions So You Can Do It Without Overdoing It, and is a contributor to TheNew Yorker, TheAtlantic, TheNew York Times, Cosmopolitan, TheObserver, McSweeney's, and Vulture. Forbes recently profiled her as a rising satire star, and she was one of Paste's top humorists of 2019. Hogan performs standup comedy all over the place. She's been seen at The Westside Showdown, The Boston Women in Comedy Festival, San Francisco Sketchfest, the Chicago Women's Funny Festival, the Finger Lakes Festival, and the Park Slope Comedy Festival. She wrote jokes for the 2018 Friar's Club roast of Gloria Allred and has had sketches featured on Comedy Central's digital platform.

Anthony Marra is the New York Times bestselling author of Mercury Pictures Presents, The Tsar of Love and Techno, and A Constellation of Vital Phenomena, winner of the National Book Critics Circle’s John Leonard Prize and the Anisfield-Wolf Book Award in Fiction, and longlisted for the National Book Award. Marra has contributed pieces to The Atlantic, Granta, The Rumpus, The New York Times, The Washington Post, and others.

Jim Parsons recently starred in the Broadway revival of Our Town and the world premiere of Paula Vogel’s Mother Play, also on Broadway, opposite Jessica Lange and Celia Keenan-Bolger. He starred alongside Ben Aldridge in Focus Features’ Spoiler Alert based on Michael Ausiello’s acclaimed memoir of the same title. Other theater includes the Off-Broadway revival of A Man of No Importance for The Classic Stage Company, The Boys in the Band, An Act of God, Harvey, and The Normal Heart. Additional films include A Kid Like Jake; Garden State; Hidden Figures; The Boys in the Band; The Normal Heart; and Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil and Vile. Parsons played Sheldon Cooper on the TV show The Big Bang Theory for twelve seasons. Upcoming projects include The Leader and Just by Looking at Him.

Meg Wolitzer is the New York Times bestselling author of The Female Persuasion, The Interestings, The Ten-Year Nap, The Position, and The Wife, among other novels. The Interestings is currently being adapted as a musical, with a book by Sarah Ruhl and music and lyrics by Sara Bareilles. Wolitzer was the guest editor of The Best American Short Stories 2017 and also writes books for young readers. She is a faculty member in the Creative Writing Program at Stony Brook University, where she co-founded and co-directs BookEnds, a yearlong intensive for emerging novelists.

CREDITS

“Phantoms and Prejudice,” by Ginny Hogan, as published in The New Yorker (April 26, 2022). Adapted from I’m More Dateable than a Plate of Refried Beans, and Other Romantic Observations (Chronicle Books, 2022). Copyright © 2022 by Ginny Hogan. Used by permission of the author.

“The Tell-Tale Heart,” by Anthony Marra, first published in McSweeney’s (Issue 49, May 9, 2017) and collected in The Pushcart Prize XLIII: Best of the Small Presses (Pushcart Press, 2018). Copyright © 2017 by Anthony Marra. Used by permission of the author.

“Jacked,” by Michael Cunningham, from A Wild Swan: And Other Tales (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2015). Copyright © 2015 by Michael Cunningham. Used by permission of Brandt & Hochman Literary Agents and Macmillan Audio.