Akwaeke Emezi’s upcoming 2022 romance novel You Made a Fool of Death with Your Beauty is set to be adapted as a film. Amazon Studios won the highly competitive bidding battle, and Michael B. Jordan’s Outlier Society will develop. This marks the first major film property acquisition for Jordan. Emezi credits the title of the […]
**This thinkpiece contains spoilers from Brit Bennett’s “The Vanishing Half.” In Brit Bennett’s compelling best-seller The Vanishing Half, two fair-skinned African American twins choose drastically different paths for themselves: One secretly decides to pass as white, while the other embodies her Black identity. Released in June of 2020, the novel has received widespread acclaim while […]
Inspired by the Little Free Libraries around the globe, Amplify Library is a new progressive concept which centers on BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, and People of Color) authors. If you aren’t aware of Little Free Libraries, these tiny libraries are placed in various communities, parks, and even unassuming places. There’s two in my neighborhood alone, and […]
In an interview with Kukuwa Ashan of Electric Lit, Kaitlyn Greenidge discusses her recently released novel, Libertie––one of JARO’s most anticipated reads of 2021. A gripping story about the meaning of freedom, Libertie follows free-born Libertie Simpson and her life in Reconstruction-era Brooklyn. Her mother, a physician, yearned for Libertie to follow in her footsteps. […]
FX has ordered a pilot for Octavia E. Butler’s 1979 classic novel Kindred, which will be written and produced by playwright and Pulitzer Prize finalist Branden Jacobs-Jenkins. According to Variety, the show will follow Dana, a young Black aspiring writer who has left her constricted familial life behind and relocated to Los Angeles to chase […]
Nancy Johnson’s debut novel The Kindest Lie, officially released today, is an exploration of motherhood, race, and class. Featured on our most anticipated books of 2021, Johnson describes her first novel as “a story about the choices that we make in our lives, and how tethered we are to our past, and how much our […]
This Thursday, January 28th at 6:00 PM EST, join in on a conversation between Miss Cicely Tyson and Whoopi Goldberg as the beloved actress and author discusses her new memoir, Just As I Am. The virtual event will be hosted by HarperCollins Publishers, Girls Write Now, and Well-Read Black Girl’s founder Glory Edim. Just As […]
Jesmyn Ward’s 2017 Award-winning novel Sing, Unburied, Sing has been on my radar for a few years now, and one of my resolutions was to tackle my extensive reading list. So although I’m a bit behind the times, here’s a story that is indeed evergreen. I found Sing, Unburied, Sing to be beautifully written with a gripping and raw […]
NEW YORK (AP) — Eric Jerome Dickey, the bestselling novelist who blended crime, romance and eroticism in “Sister, Sister,” “Waking With Enemies” and dozens of other stories about contemporary Black life, has died at age 59. Dickey’s publicist at Penguin Random House, Emily Canders, told The Associated Press that the author died of cancer Sunday […]
There have been a plethora of distinguished books throughout 2020 (view this year’s reading list here), allowing us to escape to different worlds as we grapple with a pandemic and multiple other crises. Now, we’re looking forward to unearthing even more gems in the forthcoming year, especially as multiple writers of color release their debut […]