RTA Episode 7

The Inaugural Adaptation List!

Dec 13, 2024

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(audio version above, video component below)

Let’s discuss our inaugural Adaptation List! The Black List surveyed 84 publishing industry editors and literary agents. We surveyed them about the novels published, since the Black List's 2005 founding, that they would most like to see adapted for film or television. The list is unordered and features 61 novels, each of which received multiple mentions from those who participated.

As is the norm with the annual Black List, the novels on the inaugural Adaptation List offer something for every reader, filmgoer, or television watcher–a wide spectrum of genre and theme from both award-winning and critically-acclaimed authors. They offer vivid, visual worlds and compelling characters ripe for big and small screen adaptation. They tackle pressing social issues such as race, systemic injustice, and mental health, often with searing wit and emotional depth. They explore questions of personal and collective identity and their intersection with technology and historical legacy. They examine modern relationships and the complexities of love, loyalty, and family in all their forms. They span the globe from Appalachia to Ethiopia, from Ghana to Japan, and worlds well beyond our own. They push the boundaries of narrative form and reimagine familiar genres and tropes. There are epic stories of transformation and survival that audiences continue to love on the page and will undoubtedly love when they find them in other venues.

Shop books from the Adaptation List on our BookShop list page!

Episode 7 Guests: Traci Thomas & Franklin Leonard

Traci Thomas is the creator and host of the critically acclaimed literary podcast, The Stacks. The show explores books and how they shape our culture. She is a passionate champion of reading and a deeply curious interviewer. In addition to the podcast, Traci is a monthly contributor on NPR’s Here & Now, a columnist for shereads.com, and the creator of the LAist live literary series, One for the Books.

Franklin Leonard is a film and television producer, cultural commentator, and entrepreneur. He is the founder and CEO of the Black List, the company that celebrates and supports great writing and the writers who do it via film production, its annual survey of best unproduced screenplays, and online marketplace for novels, screenplays, and television pilots.

About the host

Randy Winston is the Creative Director of Fiction at The Black List, and former Director of Writing Programs at The Center for Fiction, where he managed, curated, and directed the production of all writing courses, the illustrious First Novel Prize, the famed Susan Kamil Emerging Writer Fellowship, and the highly-sought Writers Studio membership. Prior to his work at The Center, Winston served as Fiction Editor of Slice Literary Magazine for 6 years and has over 10 years of executive admin experience in higher education. Before his MFA, Randy served as editor-in-chief of, formerly Southern Polytechnic State University, now Kennesaw State University’s, online and print student publication in Marietta, Georgia. He is a 2016 graduate of the MFA program in Creative Writing (Fiction) at The New School and sits on the board for Orion Magazine and WriteOn NYC.

About the series

A pillar of our Fiction educational resources, Read The Acknowledgements is a live visual podcast designed for book and writing professionals to share their industry experiences and help give writers a clear picture of the ecosystem that is publishing.

This podcast series exists, in part, to fundraise for writers and literary nonprofits in need. Attendance is free, and we encourage viewers and listeners to make donations to writer support funds such as the Authors League Fund, Hedgebrook, Baldwin for the Arts, and Lampblack's Direct Aid Fund.

Read the Acknowledgments is a subsidiary of The Black List, LLC.

(top, left to right: Randy Winston, Traci Thomas, Franklin Leonard)

Some of Traci’s favorite books from the past 20 years