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From: Library of America <[log in to unmask]>
Date: Fri, Dec 16, 2022 at 8:01 AM
Subject: Adapting Octavia E. Butler's Kindred for the Screen
To: TODD MASON <[log in to unmask]>
LOA talks with screenwriter and showrunner Branden Jacobs-Jenkins
No images? Click here <https://email.loa.org/t/i-e-qidurhy-tihyltjrut-td/>
[image: Library of America logo]
<https://email.loa.org/t/i-l-qidurhy-tihyltjrut-r/>
*Octavia E. Butler: *
*The Challenges of Adapting *Kindred *to the Screen*
Screenwriter and showrunner Branden Jacobs-Jenkins discusses the new TV
series with LOA
<https://email.loa.org/t/i-l-qidurhy-tihyltjrut-y/>
Expanding the world of *Kindred* for the screen
<https://email.loa.org/t/i-l-qidurhy-tihyltjrut-j/>
<https://email.loa.org/t/i-l-qidurhy-tihyltjrut-t/>
Why we need TV shows about the history and legacy of slavery
<https://email.loa.org/t/i-l-qidurhy-tihyltjrut-i/>
You may have heard about (or already watched!) the new television
adaptation of boundary-pushing author Octavia E. Butler’s 1979 novel
*Kindred* <https://email.loa.org/t/i-l-qidurhy-tihyltjrut-d/>. Earlier this
year, screenwriter and showrunner Branden Jacobs-Jenkins discussed the
production process and his relationship with Butler’s work in a one-hour
interview with LOA <https://email.loa.org/t/i-l-qidurhy-tihyltjrut-h/>.
Enjoy some highlights from the event on our website
<https://email.loa.org/t/i-l-qidurhy-tihyltjrut-k/> and YouTube
<https://email.loa.org/t/i-l-qidurhy-tihyltjrut-u/>. In them,
Jacobs-Jenkins shares thoughts on expanding the universe of the novel for
the screen, why we continue to need TV shows about the legacy of slavery,
the myriad ways Butler’s work resonates with contemporary audiences, and
more.
A time-travel story immersed in the historical horrors and ongoing
reckoning with slavery, *Kindred *follows Dana, a Black woman and aspiring
writer who finds herself mysteriously shuttled between present-day Los
Angeles and a pre–Civil War plantation in Maryland intimately connected
with her family’s past. Begun in 1974, the book was initially conceived as
part of Butler’s Patternist series, though it ultimately saw publication as
her first standalone novel.
“I think she was a bit of a graphomaniac: she wrote and wrote and wrote,”
says Jacobs-Jenkins. “But when you look at that material, you see she went
down so many paths in the forest, and at the end of the edit it’s one
sentence, it’s one very good detail. And when you’re in the writers’ room
and you’re teasing through this text, you go through that door and you’re
like, ‘There’s a whole episode in this detail.’”
If you’re interested in more background on the show, check out this
recent Vanity
Fair article <https://email.loa.org/t/i-l-qidurhy-tihyltjrut-o/>, which
includes further insights from Jacobs-Jenkins and anecdotes from the cast
on how the novel informed their performances. The eight-episode series is
available to watch in its entirety on Hulu
<https://email.loa.org/t/i-l-qidurhy-tihyltjrut-b/>.
“*She was doing the thinking that no one else was. She used to say, *‘*I*’*m
not prophetic, all I do is look at the news and I imagine what the news
means in ten years.*’*. . . So it is possible to extract from our present
tense through fiction what our future might be like and what might be at
stake in that future.*”
*—Branden Jacobs-Jenkins*
<https://email.loa.org/t/i-l-qidurhy-tihyltjrut-n/>
<https://email.loa.org/t/i-l-qidurhy-tihyltjrut-p/>
*Poster for the new *Kindred *series (left) and the first-edition cover of
the novel by American artist Laurence Schwinger.*
*Learn more about Butler and Kindred:*
- Branden Jacobs-Jenkins on why Butler
<https://email.loa.org/t/i-l-qidurhy-tihyltjrut-x/>’
<https://email.loa.org/t/i-l-qidurhy-tihyltjrut-m/>s work continues to
resonate with audiences today
<https://email.loa.org/t/i-l-qidurhy-tihyltjrut-c/> and the complexities
of depicting the violence of slavery
<https://email.loa.org/t/i-l-qidurhy-tihyltjrut-q/>
- Interview with Nisi Shawl and Gerry Canavan, co-editors of LOA’s first
volume of Butler’s work
<https://email.loa.org/t/i-l-qidurhy-tihyltjrut-a/>
- Charlie Rose interview with Butler from 2000
<https://email.loa.org/t/i-l-qidurhy-tihyltjrut-f/>
- Official show site <https://email.loa.org/t/i-l-qidurhy-tihyltjrut-z/>
and *Kindred *series trailer
<https://email.loa.org/t/i-l-qidurhy-tihyltjrut-v/>
[image: wilder 1] <https://email.loa.org/t/i-l-qidurhy-tihyltjrut-e/>
Clothbound. 789 pages.
List price: $35.00
Web Store price: $30.00 <https://email.loa.org/t/i-l-qidurhy-tihyltjrut-s/>
*Kindred, Fledgling, and Collected Stories*
<https://email.loa.org/t/i-l-qidurhy-tihyltjrut-g/>This first volume in the
Library of America edition of Butler’s collected works gathers her 1979
masterpiece, *Kindred*, one of the landmark American novels of the last
half century; her final novel and incomparable take on the vampire story,
*Fledgling*; and eight short stories and five essays—including two
previously uncollected. The edition also includes a newly researched
chronology of Butler’s life and career, as well as helpful explanatory
notes by scholar Gerry Canavan. Butler’s friend, the writer and editor Nisi
Shawl, provides an introduction.“A capacious new collection *. . . *
[America] needs her blunt but empathetic vision more than ever.”*—
Gabrielle Bellot, Bookforum*
*From Story of the Week*
Bedtime Stories to Best Sellers: Octavia E. Butler’s Journey as a Writer
<https://email.loa.org/t/i-l-qidurhy-tihyltjrut-w/>
When Octavia E. Butler was six years old, her mother stopped telling her
bedtime stories and handed her a book to read instead. “She didn’t know
what she was setting us both up for,” Butler recalled in an illuminating
essay she wrote for *Essence *magazine a decade after *Kindred*’s
publication. An LOA Story of the Week in 2021
<https://email.loa.org/t/i-l-qidurhy-tihyltjrut-yd/>, “Positive Obsession”
shares, in Butler’s own words, her hard-won path to literary acclaim.
From her early ambitions to be a full-time writer to the raft of rejections
her stories initially received to the ultimate achievement of her dream to
create fantasy and science fiction for a living, Butler’s reputation has
only grown since her death in 2006. In 2020, her 1993 novel *Parable of the
Sower* reached the New York Times Best Sellers list, while *Kindred*, her
best-known work, has sold more than half a million copies over the past two
decades.
Though Butler was ambivalent about recording her career trajectory for
posterity (“I’ve often said that since my life was filled with reading,
writing, and not much else, it was too dull to write about,” she notes at
the end of “Positive Obsession”), fans of her work both old and new can
find much to savor in this perceptive and personal self-analysis from one
of our greatest practitioners of speculative—and in many cases
prophetic—fiction.
Read “Positive Obsession” by Octavia E. Butler
<https://email.loa.org/t/i-l-qidurhy-tihyltjrut-yh/>.
*Also of Interest*
[image: Lewis] <https://email.loa.org/t/i-l-qidurhy-tihyltjrut-yk/>
Ursula K. Le Guin <https://email.loa.org/t/i-l-qidurhy-tihyltjrut-yu/>*Annals
of the Western Shore*
*Gifts* | *Voices* | *Powers*
Clothbound • 681 pages
List price: $35.00
Web Store price: $31.50 <https://email.loa.org/t/i-l-qidurhy-tihyltjrut-jl/>
[image: Stage] <https://email.loa.org/t/i-l-qidurhy-tihyltjrut-jr/>
The Future Is Female <https://email.loa.org/t/i-l-qidurhy-tihyltjrut-jy/>!*More
Classic Science Fiction Stories by Women**The 1970s*
Clothbound • 522 pages
List price: $27.95
Web Store price: $20.95 <https://email.loa.org/t/i-l-qidurhy-tihyltjrut-jj/>
[image: MIller] <https://email.loa.org/t/i-l-qidurhy-tihyltjrut-jt/>
American Science Fiction
<https://email.loa.org/t/i-l-qidurhy-tihyltjrut-ji/>*Four Classic Novels
1968–1969*
*Past Master*, R. A. Lafferty | *Picnic on Paradise*, Joanna Russ | *Nova*,
Samuel R. Delany | *Emphyrio*, Jack Vance
Clothbound • 762 pages
List price: $37.50
Web Store price: $31.50 <https://email.loa.org/t/i-l-qidurhy-tihyltjrut-jd/>
Kindred *first-edition cover:* Image courtesy of artist Laurence
Schwinger’s website <https://email.loa.org/t/i-l-qidurhy-tihyltjrut-jh/>.
*Butler photo:* Octavia E. Butler in October 2005. (Malcolm
Ali/WireImage/Getty Images)
*Questions? Comments?* Visit LOA’s contact page.
<https://email.loa.org/t/i-l-qidurhy-tihyltjrut-jk/>
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