Remakes and Replicas

Santino Fontana received the Tony Award, two Drama Desks, an Outer Critics Circle, a Lortel, an Obie, and the Clarence Derwent Award for his work in both plays and musicals. He was most recently seen on Broadway in his virtuosic Tony-winning turn as Michael/Dorsey in Tootsie. The New York Times wrote, “Santino Fontana [is] one of the most promising actors to emerge in the New York theater.” New York Magazine heralded him as an “indispensable stage star.” He’s been in 10 Broadway shows. Additionally, he is widely known for lending his voice to the villainous Prince Hans in Disney’s Academy Award–winning animated feature Frozen. On television, Fontana was recently seen on Ryan Murphy’s Grotesquerie, and the Emmy-winning The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel.  He starred on CW’s comedy Crazy Ex-Girlfriend as fan favorite Greg and NBC’s drama Shades of Blue, opposite Jennifer Lopez, simultaneously.  A critically acclaimed narrator of dozens of audiobooks, he was the original voice of Joe in Caroline Kepnes’s cult hit You and all its sequels. He received the Audie award for Stephen King’s The Institute and was chosen to read Suzanne Collins’ Hunger Games prequel, The Ballad Of Songbirds and Snakes.

Kaitlyn Greenidge is the author of two novels: We Love You, Charlie Freeman, which was named one of the New York Times Critics’ Top Ten Books of 2016 and was a finalist for the Center for Fiction First Novel Prize; and Libertie, which was named one of the most anticipated books of 2022 by, among other publications, The Washington Post, Time, and The New York Times. Greenidge is the recipient of fellowships from the Whiting Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, the Lewis Center for the Arts at Princeton University, and the Guggenheim Foundation. Currently the Features Director at Harper’s Bazaar, Greenidge’s third novel is forthcoming from Flatiron Books. She writes about books in Harper’s Bazaar's recently launched literary newsletter “A Closer Read.”

Nathan Hinton began his professional career at the Joseph Papp Public Theater and has played major and supporting roles with the Shakespeare Theatre Company in Washington, DC; Pittsburgh Public Theater; Actors Theatre of Louisville; Triad Stage; Berkeley Rep; Dallas Theatre Center; the Huntington; Rattlestick Playwrights Theater; and The Working Theater. He was a member of the first national touring company of Angels in America and won the Barrymore Award for Excellence in Theatre as part of the ensemble of Richard Greenberg’s Take Me Out with the Philadelphia Theatre Company. His film and television credits include Madam Secretary, Manifest, The Code, FBI: Most Wanted, Walking Home: A Survival Guide, The Equalizer, and Evil. Hinton is a graduate of the Yale School of Drama.

Shirley Jackson (1916 – 1965) was an American author whose works include the novels The Road Through the Wall, The Haunting of Hill House, and We Have Always Lived in the Castle, and the short story collections The Lottery and Other Stories and Dark Tales. Her stories have been widely anthologized and featured in TheBest American Short Stories and the O. Henry Prize Stories, and she was twice awarded the Mystery Writers of America Edgar Allan Poe Award for Best Short Story. The Haunting of Hill House was a finalist for The National Book Award and has been made into two feature films, a play, and most recently, a television series on Netflix. The Shirley Jackson Award was established in 2007 to honor outstanding achievement in the genres of psychological suspense, horror, and the dark fantastic.

Ben Loory is the author of the collections Tales of Falling and Flying and Stories for Nighttime and Some for the Day, both from Penguin Books. His fables and tales have appeared in The New Yorker, BOMB Magazine, Fairy Tale Review, and Electric Literature, and been heard on This American Life. His next collection, How to Get to the Magic Mountain, is forthcoming.

Maggie Siff recently completed a seven-season run as Wendy on Showtime’s Billions, for which she has received three Satellite Award nominations. She is also known for the FX series Sons of Anarchy, receiving two Critics’ Choice Award nominations, and for the role of Rachel Menken on the first season of AMC’s Mad Men (Screen Actors Guild Award nomination). Recent films include The Short History of the Long Road, A Woman/A Part, The Sweet Life, The Fifth Wave, One Percent More Humid, and Concussion. Siff is also an established theater actress; her New York theater credits include Signature Theatre’s production of Curse of the Starving Class, as well as A Lie of the Mind at the New Group, directed by Ethan Hawke, Orpheus Descending, Much Ado About Nothing, and The Taming of the Shrew with Theatre For a New Audience, and Alexis Scheer’s Breaking the Story at Second Stage. She is currently starring in Shadowlands, opposite Hugh Bonneville, at the Aldwych Theatre in London.

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. A musical of The Interestings is in development. 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

“The Vatican,” by Ben Loory, from Stories for Nighttime and Some for the Day (Penguin Books, 2011). Copyright © 2011 by Ben Loory. Used by permission of the author.

“I Love Betty,” by Kaitlyn Greenidge. Copyright © by Kaitlyn Greenidge. Used by permission of the author and Howland Literary.

“The Beautiful Stranger,” by Shirley Jackson, from Dark Tales (Penguin Classics, 2017). First published in Come Along with Me (Viking, 1968). Copyright © 1968 by Shirley Jackson. Courtesy the heirs of Shirley Jackson.