A Conversation with Selwyn Seyfu Hinds ’93

SELWYN SEYFU HINDS is a prolific and award-winning creator and storyteller of all kinds—author, editor, music scribe, producer, and screenwriter.

Most recently, Hulu snapped up Hinds’s red-hot pitch for an adaptation of Esi Edugyan’s esteemed novel Washington Black after a three-way bidding war. Sterling K. Brown and Anthony Hemingway are attached and Hinds is set to write and serve as showrunner. Hinds also recently served as a writer/producer on Jordan Peele’s new iteration of the Twilight Zone for CBS All Access, penning the critically hailed police brutality episode “Replay,” starring Sanaa Lathan. The episode earned Hinds a finalist nomination in the Drama Teleplay category for the 45th annual Humanitas Prize. Hinds has also served as Consulting Producer on HBO Max’s DC universe anthology Strange Adventures; and he’s developed at HBO with George R.R. Martin.

On the feature side, Selwyn’s current slate includes Legendary Entertainment’s adaptation of the graphic novel, Prince of Cats—a wild mash-up of Shakespeare, hip-hop, and samurai warrior culture—with Spike Lee set to direct; an adaptation of Running A Thousand Miles For Freedom—the true life tale of the extraordinary escape of enslaved couple William and Ellen Craft—which he developed for Big Beach Films, with Hanelle Culpepper set to direct; Arkham, a Gotham City set thriller for DC/Warner Bros; and, most recently, an adaptation of the classic David Eddings fantasy series The Belgariad (over 20 million books sold worldwide) for City Hill Arts and Game of Thrones producer Vince Geradis.

Selwyn’s storytelling life before screenwriting includes co-creating the Vertigo comic-book series, Dominique Laveau: Voodoo Child; serving as Consulting Producer of Original Programming and Executive Producer of News and Docs at BET Networks; penning two critically hailed non-fiction books, his memoir Gunshots in My Cook-Up: Bits and Bites of a Hip-Hop Caribbean Life, and To a Young Jazz Musician: Letters from the Road, written with Wynton Marsalis; and serving as Editor-in-Chief of The Source magazine during its late-90s heyday. Selwyn’s also written for a wide array of major publications, including The New York Times, The Village Voice, Vanity Fair, USA Today, Spin, and Vibe Magazine, and his essays have been collected in numerous anthologies.

Longtime DJ, poet, unrepentant shopaholic, and sci-fi Nerd, Selwyn got cracking on all those journeys as a kid back at Guyana’s Queens College, one of the most storied schools in the Caribbean, before later attending Princeton University, where he received degrees in English and African-American Studies. But his most significant accomplishment is being the father of a teenage girl. Selwyn is represented by The Gotham Group, and though he lives in LA, he remains a die-hard Brooklynite.

A.M. HOMES is a Washington D.C. native, graduate of Sarah Lawrence College, The University of Iowa Writers Workshop and the Whitney Museum Independent Study Program.

Her most recent book is a collection of short stories, Days of Awe. In 2021 she will publish a new novel, Phoenix: The Unfolding.

Her previous books include, May We Be Forgiven, which won the 2013 Women’s Prize for Fiction (formerly known as the Orange Prize). Homes’ memoir, The Mistress’s Daughter, the story of being “found” by her biological family and a literary exploration and investigation of identity, adoption and genealogical ties that bind, was published to international acclaim. Other works include the novels: This Book Will Save Your Life, Music For Torching, The End of Alice, In a Country of Mothers, and Jack; as well as the short-story collections, Days of Awe, Things You Should Know and The Safety of Objects; the travel memoir, Los Angeles: People, Places and The Castle on the Hill; and the artist’s book, Appendix A:.

Her work has been translated into twenty-two languages and she writes frequently on the arts for publications such as Art Forum, Granta, McSweeney’s, The New Yorker and the New York Times and is a Contributing Editor to Vanity Fair, Bomb and Blind Spot.

A.M. Homes is active in the world of film and television and is currently developing television shows for BBC/AMC, and Hulu along with supporting the development of adaptations of her works—This Book Will Save Your Life—by Benedict Cumberbatch/SunnyMarch and Music for Torching with Julie Bowen/Carl Beverly.

She was Co-Executive Producer of the television show Falling Water and worked with David E. Kelly on the adaptation of Stephen King’s Mr. Mercedes. Previously Homes was a writer/producer of The L Word, in 2004-2005 and wrote the adaptation of her first novel, Jack, for Showtime. Homes has also written original television pilots for ABC, CBS, FX and HBO.

She has been the recipient of numerous awards including fellowships from the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, NYFA, and The Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers at The New York Public Library, along with the Benjamin Franklin Award and the Deutscher Jugendliteraturpreis.

A.M. Homes is active in the LGBTQ community and in the arts community on the Board of Directors of Yaddo, the Writers Guild of America East Council as well as on the Boards of Directors of The New York Foundation for the Arts, Poets and Writers and The Elizabeth Dance Company and as advisor to The Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown.