Poets & Writers Theater

Shirley (Blue Rider Press, 2014), Susan Scarf Merrell’s historical fiction novel about a young couple who stay at the home of horror writer Shirley Jackson and literary critic Stanley Edgar Hyman in 1964, has been adapted into a feature film of the same name. Directed by Josephine Decker, the thriller stars Logan Lerman, Elisabeth Moss, Michael Stuhlbarg, and Odessa Young.

In this video, German Italian author Helena Janeczek talks about her historical fiction novel, The Girl With the Leica (Europa Editions, 2019), translated from the Italian by Ann Goldstein, for which she won the Strega Prize. The book centers on the life of Gerda Taro, who documented the Spanish Civil War with photographer Robert Capa and was tragically the first woman photojournalist to die on the battlefield.

Tom Shankland has directed a new television series adaptation of Les Misérables, Victor Hugo’s classic 1862 historical fiction novel, for Masterpiece on PBS. The cast of characters includes a young working woman Fantine, her daughter Cosette, and police inspector Javert, who chases after fugitive Jean Valjean. Ellie Bamber, Lilly Collins, David Oyelowo, and Dominic West star in the lead roles.

Alias Grace (Anchor Books, 1996), Margaret Atwood’s fictional account of Grace Marks, an Irish Canadian maid who was convicted of murdering her employer and his mistress in 1843, has been adapted into a television series. Directed by Mary Harron and written by Sarah Polley, the series stars Sarah Gadon, Edward Holcroft, and Zachary Levi.

“I wanted very much to write an accurate historical novel because I was so troubled about how hate can operate in our hearts.” Min Jin Lee introduces herself and talks about the impetus for her second novel, Pachinko (Grand Central Publishing, 2017), a story that follows four generations of a Korean immigrant family in twentieth-century Japan.

“He basically married the heroine of his stories.” In this Amazon original series based on Therese Anne Fowler’s historical novel Z: A Novel of Zelda Fitzgerald (St. Martin’s Press, 2013), David Hoflin and Christina Ricci star as F. Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald.

The Handmaiden, directed by Park Chan-wook, is a South Korean film adaptation of Sarah Waters’s crime novel Fingersmith (Riverhead Books, 2002). The film, which premiered at the 2016 Cannes Film Festival, transfers the setting of the Victorian era story—about an orphaned pickpocket hired to pose as a maid for a wealthy heiress—to Korea under Japanese colonial rule in the 1930s.

"It's very much about ordinary lives being plunged into the unexpected, the eruption of passion and drama into domestic life." Sarah Waters speaks about her latest novel, set in 1922 in a large house full of family members, servants, and lodgers. The novel was published by Riverhead in September and was a finalist for the Kirkus Prize.