Selma director Ava DuVernay has signed to direct an original TV series for Oprah’s network OWN, based on the novel Queen Sugar by Natalie Baszile (Penguin/Pamela Dorman; Thorndike; 2014), which was featured in our Penguin First Flights Debut author program.

Oprah herself will have a recurring role in the series. Production  is expected to begin later this year.

About a woman who leaves her L.A. life to move, with her teenage daughter, to Southern Louisiana, where she has in inherited a sugar cane plantation, it was selected as a book of the week by Oprah’s O magazine, saying, “In Queen Sugar, two bulwarks of American literature—Southern fiction and the transformational journey—are given a fresh take by talented first-time novelist Natalie Baszile.”

In the press release announcing the production, Oprah states, “I loved this book and immediately saw it as a series for OWN. The story’s themes of reinventing your life, parenting alone, family connections and conflicts, and building new relationships are what I believe will connect our viewers to this show.”

This entry was posted on Monday, February 9th, 2015 at 2:58 pm and is filed under Books & TV, Fiction. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.