According to Variety.com, Academy Award-winning producer/writer/director Barry Jenkins (“Moonlight“) and his PASTEL production banner have landeda first-look television deal at Amazon.
Jenkins is planning to direct the entire limited series “Underground Railroad” at Amazon, based on Colson Whitehead’s Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award-winning novel from 2016. Under the deal, Jenkins will exclusively develop television series for Amazon Studios.
“Barry is clearly a master of groundbreaking, authentically emotional storytelling and we are so proud to have him share that gift with us,” said Jennifer Salke, head of Amazon Studios. “We are incredibly fortunate to have also secured his directorial vision for the entire limited series The Underground Railroad.”
“We at PASTEL are excited to continue our Amazon relationship begun on ‘Underground Railroad’ and look forward to growing that partnership on projects near and beyond,” said Jenkins.
Jenkins’ feature film debut, “Medicine for Melancholy,” was lauded as one of the best films of 2009 by The New York Times. He recently debuted his latest film, “If Beale Street Could Talk,” based on James Baldwin’s novel and starring Regina King and Brian Tyree Henry, at the 2018 Toronto International Film Festival. The U.S. release in theaters is scheduled for November 30 of this year.
Author Jacqueline Woodson (Juna F. Nagle / HarperCollins) by Lori Lakin Hutcherson (@lakinhutcherson)
According to latimes.com, acclaimed author Jacqueline Woodson, who won a National Book Award for “Brown Girl Dreaming,” just won the 2018 Astrid Lindgren Memorial Award on Tuesday. The award comes with a prize of $608,000, which is funded by the government of Sweden. Publishers Weekly reports that Woodson is the 18th person or organization to win the prize, which is considered one of the most prestigious children’s literary awards in the world.
The Lindgren Award, named after the Swedish creator of “Pippi Longstocking,” caps a list of many honors Woodson has won over her career. In addition to her National Book Award, the author has won the Coretta Scott King Award twice and a Newbery Award four times.
In January, the Library of Congress named Woodson the National Ambassador for Young People’s Literature. Although Woodson has written two adult novels, “Autobiography of a Family Photo” and “Another Brooklyn,” most of her published work has been for middle-grade readers and young adults.
National Book Award Winner and new National Ambassador for Young People’s Literature Jacqueline Woodson (photo via memphisparent.com) by Shannon Maughan via publishersweekly.com
Author Jacqueline Woodson, whose professional accolades include a National Book Award (Brown Girl Dreaming), four Newbery Honors (Brown Girl Dreaming, After Tupac and D Foster, Feathers and Show Way) and a stint as the Young People’s Poet Laureate, has been named the sixth National Ambassador for Young People’s Literature, for 2018–2019. Her appointment will become official at an inauguration ceremony on Tuesday, January 9 at the Library of Congress, presided over by Librarian of Congress Carla Hayden. And Woodson will accept the proverbial torch, passed from author-illustrator Gene Luen Yang, who has just completed his two-year term as Ambassador and played a key role in recruiting her.
The National Ambassador for Young People program is sponsored by the Center for the Book in the Library of Congress, the Children’s Book Council, and CBC’s charitable arm, Every Child a Reader. The Librarian of Congress selects the Ambassador based on the recommendations of an independent committee comprised of various children’s literature experts including educators, librarians, and booksellers. Among the criteria for the Ambassador post are: contributions to young people’s literature, the ability to relate to kids and teens, and dedication to fostering literacy in all forms.
In a statement, Hayden shared her enthusiasm for Woodson’s selection. “We are delighted that Jacqueline Woodson has agreed to be the new National Ambassador for Young People’s Literature,” she said. “I have admired Jacqueline Woodson’s work for years, especially her dedication to children and young-adult literature. The Library of Congress looks forward to Jacqueline’s tenure of encouraging young readers to embrace reading as a means to improve the world.”
Woodson says she never saw herself as Ambassador. In fact, she had contacted Yang, a friend, about a year ago to put forward the name of someone else (who she declines to name) she thought would be a great choice. “I had called Gene to put a name in the hat,” she said from her Brooklyn home during a telephone interview. “He told me, ‘Well, we have someone else in mind.’ I figured he was blowing me off.” And even when talk of the honor came up in passing, years ago, Woodson wasn’t sure she would ever be a good fit. “Earlier on, when the position was first starting to get some traction, and Jon Scieszka was the Ambassador,” she recalled, “people were asking me if I would ever do it, and I said, ‘Heck, no! There’s no way I could do that.’” She was busy with her writing and had just welcomed a new baby at that time. Over time, “I kind of had the sense that I had put the kibosh on it,” she added.
But more recently, Yang called and asked if Woodson would consider taking on the appointment. She continued to champion another author (“someone younger!” she joked), but Yang persisted. “He went through all the ways in which he thought I would bring something to the Ambassadorship that was needed at this time,” Woodson said. “I thought about it, I talked to my partner about it, and I was still a bit reluctant. But then Gene said that Dr. Hayden was really into me taking this position. And I love Dr. Hayden.” Woodson explained that one of the rules in her life has always been, “When it comes to Enoch Pratt Library [Hayden’s former library, in Baltimore], I can never say no to them. I did my first reading there way back when Last Summer with Maizon came out, and I have loved everyone there. I thought, OK, if Carla Hayden is asking me to do this, I’m not saying no to it.” On a more philosophical note, she continued, “I think you are often called to do the work you’re not quite ready to do, or willing to do. And for me that’s a sign that I need to push through and do the work that’s needed.”
Woodson has chosen the phrase “Reading = Hope x Change,” as her platform as Ambassador. “I definitely believe that reading can change us and shape us in so many ways, and through it we can be exposed to people and places and ideas that we might not otherwise come across or confront in real life,” she said. “A platform about the importance of reading and having conversations across the lines of books is really important to me.”
Woodson says she will use her message to address something she has been noticing. “Young people are getting labeled ‘reluctant reader,’ or ‘advanced reader,’ and the labels in front of their names begin to try to tell them who they are,” she lamented. “I would like to see less of that and more of just kids who read.” What they read shouldn’t matter and how they read it shouldn’t matter, she said, “just so long as they can have conversations and have a deep understanding of and a deep love for what they’re reading.”
One of Woodson’s foremost goals as Ambassador is to reach young people in areas of the country that are traditionally underserved. “My family and I are going to the opening of the Equal Justice Initiative’s Legacy Museum and National Memorial for Peace and Justice [acknowledging victims of lynchings] in Alabama this spring. I’m going to stay and try to visit some schools in Alabama and Mississippi in some of the places where they don’t get to meet writers or ambassadors every day,” she said. Additionally, she says she’s looking forward to going into juvenile detention centers and other places “where the underserved can begin to tell their stories.”
Though she’s not exactly sure how kids will relate to her in a new role, she’s excited to find out. “The thing that always brings me the greatest joy is meeting the young people,” she said. “I’m always surprised when a kid’s in awe of me as an author—I think ‘I’m just Jacqueline Woodson and I wrote a few books.’ But they’ve been studying you so long and you walk into the classroom and you’re like this superstar to them. Then you work yourself back to connecting to them so that they see you as a human being and they see themselves as young people who can do what you do. In this position it’s the same. I would love for young people to see themselves as national ambassadors of many things, today and always.” She cites the example of her own family. “I always tell my kids when we go to other countries, ‘You are ambassadors for this family. When you walk out there people are going to have ideas about this family, and how you represent yourself is going to make a difference in how they think.’ ”
The opportunity to talk about reading is another high point she’s anticipating. “I am excited for the young people’s reactions and the interactions that we’ll have around literature, and really talking about reading,” she said. “In the past mostly I’ve talked about my books and my writing process. Now I can talk much more about my reading process and the reading process, and the conversations that can be had where there isn’t a right or wrong. Did you infer from the book? Who cares? I want to know what you loved about the book and what made you mad and I want you guys to agree and disagree and have real true conversations and make amazing text-to-life connections about the book.”
Asked if there’s anything that might be scary or daunting about her new position, Woodson is reflective. “It is a very scary time to be alive,” she said. “And given that, I think of [poet and activist] Audre Lorde saying ‘we can sit in our safe corners mute as bottles and we will still be no less afraid.’ I do believe this is all I have—my words, I have the words that I write down, I have the words that I speak out, I have the words that I take into classrooms.” Woodson says she accepts that there will be hatred in general, and hatred online questioning why she would be chosen as Ambassador. “Risk of backlash and people not being kind, but that’s been the risk my whole life,” she said. “It’s not going to keep me from what I’ve been called to do.”
Jesmyn Ward attends the 68th National Book Awards at Cipriani Wall Street on November 15, 2017 in New York City, NY, USA. Photo by Dennis Van Tine/Sipa USA(Sipa via AP Images)
MacArthur “Genius” grantee Jesmyn Ward took home the National Book Award prize for Fiction Wednesday, marking the second time she has won the prestigious award.
She took the top prize for her book “Sing, Unburied, Sing,” a Mississippi-based family epic that, according to the New York Times, “grapples with race, poverty and the psychic scars of past violence.” She previously won the fiction award in 2011 for her novel “Salvage the Bones.”
Critics have compared her writing to works by greats like Toni Morrison and William Faulkner. In her acceptance speech Ward said that she had received her fair amount of rejections for her subject matter.
“Throughout my career, when I have been rejected, there was sometimes subtext, and it was this: People will not read your work because these are not universal stories,” she told the audience. “I don’t know whether some doorkeepers felt this way because I wrote about poor people or because I wrote about black people or because I wrote about Southerners. As my career progressed and I got some affirmations, I still encountered that mindset every now and again.
Eitherway, she added, many people were able to connect with her characters and stories: “You looked at me, at the people I love and write about, you looked at my poor, my black, my Southern children, women and men — and you saw yourself. You saw your grief, your love, your losses, your regrets, your joy, your hope.“
Earlier this year, she was a recipient of a MacArthur ”genius grant“ from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation. Source: https://www.essence.com/culture/jesmyn-ward-second-national-book-award-sing-unburied-sing
article via blackamericaweb.com
NEW YORK (AP) — Ta-Nehisi Coates is a prize-winning nonfiction author, journalist and comic book writer. Now he is taking on fiction.
Random House’s One World imprint announced Thursday that Coates has two more books planned, one nonfiction and the other fiction. The books were acquired by One World publisher Chris Jackson, who edited Coates’ best-selling “Between the World and Me.” The book was a Pulitzer Prize finalist last month and winner of the National Book Award.
The first new book is scheduled to come out next year. No other details were made available.
Coates is a national correspondent for The Atlantic and is working on a new Black Panther comic book series for Marvel. He is also the author of “The Beautiful Struggle,” a memoir about his childhood.
Ta-Nehisi Coates in 2015. (Photo Credit: Gabriella Demczuk for The New York Times)
Ta-Nehisi Coates, already a National Book Award winner for “Between the World and Me,” now has a chance to add a National Book Critics Circle Award for criticism to his mantel. Mr. Coates’s book, a meditation on racism in America written in the form of a letter to his son, joins works by the novelist Lauren Groff, the memoirist and critic Vivian Gornick and the poet Ada Limón among those nominated for the awards.
The awards, determined by a jury of critics and book review editors, honor excellence in six categories – autobiography, biography, criticism, fiction, nonfiction and poetry. The winners will be named on March 17. On Monday, however, the group announced the recipients of its two annual citations: Wendell Berry, an environmentalist, farmer and novelist, won the Ivan Sandrof Lifetime Achievement Award, while Carlos Lozada, the nonfiction critic for The Washington Post, captured the Nona Balakian Citation for Excellence in Reviewing.
Memoirs, graphic novels and stories in verse were the big winners of this year’s American Library Association’s awards for young adult and children’s literature. The awards, which are among the most prestigious literary prizes for children’s book authors, were announced Monday at the association’s midwinter conference in Chicago.
Kwame Alexander’s novel in verse, “The Crossover,” about 13-year-old twin brothers who are basketball stars, won the John Newbery Medal for the most outstanding contribution to children’s literature. Mr. Alexander also received a Coretta Scott King honor recognizing African-American authors and illustrators. It was the first A.L.A. award for Mr. Alexander, a poet and novelist who has published 17 books.
Jacqueline Woodson’s memoir in verse, “Brown Girl Dreaming” (which has already won a National Book Award), along with Cece Bell’s illustrated memoir, “El Deafo” (which chronicles her hearing loss at an early age from spinal meningitis and her struggle to fit in at school), were named as Newbery Honor books.
Ms. Woodson, whose memoir describes her childhood and coming of age in South Carolina and New York in the 1960s and 1970s, also won the Coretta Scott King Award recognizing outstanding African-American children’s book authors and illustrators, and the Robert F. Sibert honor for the most distinguished informational book for children.
Other winners include Dan Santat’s “The Adventures of Beekle: The Unimaginary Friend,” a whimsical story for 3- to 6-year-olds, which earned the Randolph Caldecott Medal for the most distinguished American picture book.
“I’ll Give You the Sun,” Jandy Nelson’s novel about teenage fraternal twins who compete over everything, won the Michael L. Printz Award for excellence in literature written for young adults.
The awards come at a moment when children’s literature is holding steady as a fast-growing and profitable category for publishers. Sales of children’s and young adult books grew nearly 22 percent in the first 10 months of 2014, compared with the previous year, while sales of adult books fell slightly, according to the latest figures from the Association of American Publishers.
Harvard Professor and author Annette Gordon-Reed, 51, whose book “The Hemingses of Monticello: An American Family” (W. W. Norton) won the 2009 Pulitzer Prize in History and the 2008 National Book Award for nonfiction, is among the 23 recipients of the $500,000 “genius awards” to be announced on Tuesday by the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation. Ms. Gordon-Reed investigated the story of the slave family that included Sally Hemings, a slave owned by Jefferson who scholars widely believe bore his children. A New Yorker, Ms. Gordon-Reed teaches law and history at Harvard. Some of her grant will go toward travel expenses as she researches another book on the Hemings, she said. Twelve men and 11 women, ranging in age from 30 to 72, were named MacArthur fellows this year. All will receive $100,000 a year for five years, no strings attached. Since the inception of the program in 1981 and including this year’s fellows, 828 people, ranging in age from 18 to 82 at the time of their selection, have been named. article information via nytimes.com
Harvard Professor and author Annette Gordon-Reed, 51, whose book “The Hemingses of Monticello: An American Family” (W. W. Norton) won the 2009 Pulitzer Prize in History and the 2008 National Book Award for nonfiction, is among the 23 recipients of the $500,000 “genius awards” to be announced on Tuesday by the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation. Ms. Gordon-Reed investigated the story of the slave family that included Sally Hemings, a slave owned by Jefferson who scholars widely believe bore his children. A New Yorker, Ms. Gordon-Reed teaches law and history at Harvard. Some of her grant will go toward travel expenses as she researches another book on the Hemings, she said.
Twelve men and 11 women, ranging in age from 30 to 72, were named MacArthur fellows this year. All will receive $100,000 a year for five years, no strings attached. Since the inception of the program in 1981 and including this year’s fellows, 828 people, ranging in age from 18 to 82 at the time of their selection, have been named.
Jacqueline Woodson’s memoir in verse, “Brown Girl Dreaming” (which has already won a National Book Award), along with Cece Bell’s illustrated memoir, “El Deafo” (which chronicles her hearing loss at an early age from spinal meningitis and her struggle to fit in at school), were named as Newbery Honor books.
