We’ve said it for years: if you want the good stories, read the books. The books we’ve devoured in an evening and dissected in our group chats are leaping off the page as optioned, developed, and fast-tracked projects for television.
Real-life power couple Gabrielle Union and Dwyane Wade have signed on to executive produce “The Education of Kia Greer,” a novel by Alanna Bennett. The author, who worked on XO, KItty and Roswell, New Mexico, posted the news on her Instagram.
Bennett’s book revolves around the second-youngest daughter of a famous family, whose involvement with a pop star leads her to question the fame machine.
It’s the latest in a string of novels by Black authors with coming-of-age stories at the core. The Davenports was optioned by The Gilded Age co-showrunner Sonja Warfield and And Just Like That… executive producer Susan Fales-Hill last year. Krystal Marquis’ lush, romantic YA novel is set among three young women navigating society in early 1900s Chicago.
Fast forward nine decades… Amy DuBois Barnett’s If I Ruled The World, which dropped last month, is already being adapted into a TV series by Hulu, with Lee Daniels co-writing the pilot. The drama focuses on a young Black editor navigating the high-stakes, competitive, and misogynistic world of magazine publishing in the nineties.
The adaptation wave doesn’t stop there.
Celebrated author Kennedy Ryan’s Before I Let Go, part of the Skyland series, is in development at Peacock.
Tia Williams’ Seven Days in June, a fan-favorite romance about two Black authors who reconnect at a literary conference in Brooklyn after a passionate teen affair, has been in development for television since 2024, and Deesha Philyaw’s The Secret Lives of Church Ladies, a National Book Award finalist, has also been commissioned for a future series.
So, get ready for Black women in ballgowns or slip dresses, with generational wealth or high-profile positions, and complicated love adventures. Because there’s nothing like watching our stories unfold on screen.