Bryan Washington’s debut picked up for TV
A24 announced that it has won Memorial for its TV division. Houstonian Bryan Washington’s much-anticipated debut novel will be published October 27, 2020, by Riverhead Books, an imprint of Penguin Random House. Washington will adapt his work for A24, which will be joined by producers Scott Rudin and Eli Bush.
According to the publisher, Memorial, which is set in Houston, is “a funny and profound story about family in all its strange forms, joyful and hard-won vulnerability, becoming who you’re supposed to be, and the limits of love.”
Washington’s debut collection of short fiction, Lot: Stories (Riverhead, 2019), won the Dylan Thomas Prize, the O. Henry Award, New York Public Library Young Lions Fiction Award, the Earnest J. Gaines Award for Literary Fiction, a Lambda Literary Award, and was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle’s John Leonard Prize, the PEN/Robert W. Bingham Prize, and the Aspen Words Literary Prize. Lot was also included in President Barack Obama’s best-of-2019 list.
A24 collaborations with Rudin and Bush include Uncut Gems, Ex Machina, Lady Bird, Eighth Grade, and First Cow. A24’s Euphoria won a Best Actress Emmy for Zendaya, and the producer is also behind the Golden-Globe winning and Emmy-nominated Ramy, created by and starring Ramy Youssef.
Washington grew up in Houston, earned his B.A. from the University of Houston, and is currently writer– and scholar-in-residence at Rice University.
“I feel really privileged right now,” Washington, who was named to the National Book Award’s 5 Under 35, told the Houston Chronicle. “This is not the sort of thing you can expect.”