Kibkabe Araya's Blog, page 32

Marketing maven Arian Simone shares how Barnes & Noble picked up her self-published book

Arian Simone recently announced the inspirational book she self-published earlier this year earned a spot on Barnes & Noble bookshelves, producing a book tour and an author event later this year.

The media and marketing entrepreneur is known for her Hollywood public relations game with coordinating events for musicians Lil Wayne, Chris Brown, and Ne-Yo, but she became an author first in 2015 with the self-published My Fabulous & Fearless Journey: From Homeless to Hollywood. She released another self-help book, Fearless Faith + Hustle: 21 Day Devotional Journey, in January. This book, according to Arian Simone’s Instagram, had Barnes & Noble knocking on her door via an email through her website.

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TESTIMONY I don’t have an agent, publisher, manager, or publicist yet but I serve a God who can open doors

Book Review: ‘The Wrong End of the Table’ by Ayser Salman

The Wrong End of the Table: A Mostly Comic Memoir of a Muslim Arab American Woman Just Trying to Fit in by Ayser Salman

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

“The Wrong End of the Table” by Ayser Salman is a funny outlook on American life via the eyes of an Iraqi Muslim transplant. It’s very light as in mostly the reader gets a view of dating obstacles rather than visits to the mosque, but the humor is well-constructed and the story is relatable.

The author moves to Ohio from Iraq at the age of 3 with eventually relocating to Kentucky then Saudi Arabia then back to Kentucky, where she wrestles with adolescence. Some of the events chosen to be highlighted are intriguing with her stint living in Saudi Arabia and connecting with a friend through the “Xanadu” soundtrack. Or how another friend there worked to escape the restrictive country to her mother who lived in the U.S. The Saudi Arabia chapters stick out since it’s rare to hear what it was like to grow up as a girl there in the 1980s, especially one who had come from America. Another event that stuck out was when the author lived in the college dorm in Kentucky and was accused by her African-American roommate’s cousin of racism over a Prince poster. It shows the growth during that young adult period when clashing with different people from different backgrounds.

Then some of the events were questionable to be plucked out for a memoir like her preschool experience of seeing sexual touching, which didn’t really open to another storyline though emphasized how America would be very different from Iraq. It fit with the theme of the story of not understanding what was going on while trying to be in the know, but it was awkward. At the end, she dives into dating in her 40s, which highlights multiple men who don’t really make an imprint in her life yet they’re mentioned.

Overall, it’s a light and funny memoir. I waited for moments such as her experiences jumping to so many different places and finding a mosque since her Muslim identity is in the title and a part of the book’s marketing, but it’s somewhat missing. The footnotes on almost every page may sound annoying, but they’re hilarious. To sum the memoir up would be it’s a collection of essays of experiences that may not be as life-defining but can induce laughs.

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‘Queen Sugar’ TV Review: Skin Transparent

The fallout from Nova’s (Rutina Wesley) memoir is still stirring up drama, but in this episode we get more insight on another family secret unbeknownst to most family members.

The episode starts with Nova’s nephew and her sister Charley’s (Dawn-­Lyen Gardner) son Micah (Nicholas L. Ashe) going to stay with Nova with plans to attend her upcoming book-signing. Sitting with his mother, Micah wonders how long the silent treatment will stay enforced among the Bordelons.

The family matriarch and aunt Violet (Tina Lifford) can’t sleep, claiming recipes are running through her head, but Hollywood pushes for her to talk about the situation with Jimmy Dale (guest star David Alan Grier), her abusive ex-husband who reappeared after communicating with Nova on her book.

Nova creeps around Violet’s restaurant since she had been banned from being around her aunt, but is turned away by an employee. Nova then calls her brother Ralph Angel (Kofi Siriboe), who doesn’t pick up. News comes about her getting a six-week book tour due to her glowing The New York Times review. That news, of course, moves her attention away from the family and back on her success.

Charley tries to team up with the other female shareholder to go against the Landrys, the sugar cane empire family that had once owned her ancestors. But the shareholder tells Charley to back off because the Landrys are too powerful. So Charley sashays into a country club to approach a Landry about a highway proposal that would gut Bordelon land. The woman tells Charley that she had read Nova’s book with Charley clapping back on the book with a comparison to “sentimental dribble.”

While Charley recovers from her business-heavy moves, she gets home only to meet her ex-husband’s daughter from an extramarital affair. These affairs are described in Nova’s book with Charley paying off another mistress, so that drama haunts her with the publicity from the book and now a breathing part of evidence from an affair is right in her home.

At the book-signing for Blessing and Blood, Nova reads from a recently added chapter called “Buried Memories” about her father being beaten by three white men at a fishing trip to protect his daughter. She read she would wander the sugarcane fields at night, and on one night, she saw her father bury something into the ground. This is an addition to the book. Her ex-girlfriend comes up to her during the book-signing session and asks about Nova’s family not being there, visible with the empty chairs in the front. She gives Nova a kiss on the lips.

Darla (Bianca Lawson), Ralph Angel’s ex-fiancee and mother of their son Blue (Ethan Hutchison), receives Nova’s book and reads the details of her drug-fueled prostituting nights with baby Blue sitting in the corner. In a flash, she bursts into Nova’s door describing her shock that her past life is in those pages. Nova tries to clean it up; Darla’s name and identifying marks have been changed. This doesn’t sit well with Darla, who keeps telling Nova that she didn’t think of Blue’s feelings since he will eventually read about his mother’s past life.

Charley tells Violet and Ralph Angel at the restaurant that Micah asked about the added chapter in Nova’s book. Violet said she doesn’t know what her brother did that night Nova recalled when she was younger, but he had been worried about Nova getting sexually assaulted by those three white men until that night. Vehemently, Violet defends her brother about him and everyone else having the right to keep a secret between themselves and God.

Darla is hysterically crying on her porch about having to tell Blue the truth while Violet is doing the same in her bathroom with Hollywood hearing the muffled cries as the bathwater runs. As the family falls apart, Nova carries her heavy suitcases out the door for her book tour.

The depth of the secrets are felt in this episode. And Nova switches from concern about the book’s aftermath on her family to excitement when she receives good news from her literary agent and publisher. She still looks bad for unveiling her family’s secrets for money and success, yet she’s torn on what to do about it since her family blocks her apologies. More secrets will be revealed, or at least, there will be more coming out of the secrets we know now.

‘Queen Sugar’ TV Review: Where My Body Stops or Begins

The season so far is wrought by the impact of Nova’s (Rutina Wesley) book that the family didn’t see coming.

The episode starts with Micah (Nicholas L. Ashe) returning from vacation with Nova’s book in hand, in which his mother Charley (Dawn-Lyen Gardner) is questioned about why she paid her ex-husband’s mistress millions to keep quiet and working for the sugarcane company ran by descendants of the owners of the Bordelon family’s ancestors. Tough questions indeed.

In the next scene, Nova is asking her agent what to wear for an interview with an audience of psychologists when she gets word of The New York Times review for book that’s called “a love letter” on race, culture, and identity. The critics love the book putting a microscope on the Bordelons.

Nova is soon sitting on a talk show similar to OWN’s Iyanla, Fix My Life with a family asking for guidance on how to mend a sisterly relationship. They want advice on how Nova and Charley became closer. Of course, that relationship is strained over the contents in the book yet the general public doesn’t know it yet…

Meanwhile, Charley is arguing over her shareholder voting status at the company. Again, the company Nova criticized her for being a part of because of their family’s slavery history. And Charley is given the how-you-should-be-grateful-to-be-in-the-room-since-you’re-a-black-woman speech by her colleague about her dividends.

Violet’s shadow-lurking surprise guest, who gave her such a fright that she fainted in her restaurant, appears to be her abusive ex-husband named Jimmy (David Alan Grier). Elsewhere, Ralph Angel (Kofi Siriboe) tells Darla (Bianca Lawson) that the revelation of him not being Blue’s (Ethan Hutchison) biological father is in Nova’s book. “I didn’t read much after that part. I couldn’t,” he tells her as Darla gets teary about the thought of little Blue discovering the truth.

Jimmy comes back to Violet’s house later and demands to talk to her. He says he wants them to get on the right track, and Violet is hypnotized (in a bad way) by the sight of him. She shrinks, then speaks up. “You’re the last person who can talk about dignity, Jimmy Dale,” she yells. “Get out of my house!”

Nova appears and asks Jimmy why he’s there. Jimmy says it’s nice to see Nova again, which has Violet questioning if they had spoken recently.

“Whatever you did to bring this to my doorstep, it cannot be explained,” Violet tells Nova. Then Nova shoves Jimmy away from Violet until the women are pushing him out the door. But luckily Hollywood, Violet’s new husband, approaches from the driveway and repeatedly punches Jimmy on the lawn.

Nova says she had visited Jimmy for her book to get his point-of-view on his marriage to Violet. “My intention wasn’t to hurt anyone” is her pathetic excuse.

Violet tells Nova that her late parents would be ashamed and told her to leave her home. “I don’t want to look at you. I don’t want to talk to you. Not right now, not tomorrow, what I’m feeling in 10 years can’t put enough distance between us… This is the last time I let you in this house, Nova Bordelon.”

Nova leaves the house. But the greed to craft that Ta-Nehisi Coates-like memoir and using her family as a prop to fetch the fame and status as a culturally woke critic is so overpowering in this episode. Nova brought back someone who obviously was abusive to her beloved aunt. Maybe she didn’t think Jimmy would show up at Violet’s door, but the traumatizing fear a woman may have over an abusive partner returning from the grave she mentally placed him in was shown brilliantly in those scenes.

Another matter was how Blue, who’s about 7 years old, will learn maybe before he should about his true paternity that could send him into a tailspin, questioning the only family he’s ever known. While on the other hand, Micah is a teenager, so him finding out about his mother’s actions against his father’s indiscretions sure would leave a bad taste in his mouth but he’s mature enough to understand the product of the NBA world his family had been in for so long.

This season is wonderfully showing how one’s memoir could ignite a fire with the power to destroy a family. When a memoir is written, do we later see the aftermath from others who are in the story? Is there a sufficient post-memoir describing the interactions between friends and family during the memoir’s release? It’s an interesting concept that writers may not take into consideration because they own their stories, but others may feel violated by that ownership.

‘Younger’ TV Review: The Unusual Suspect

The overarching theme of the season is Kelsey (Hilary Duff) taking over the publishing house as a millennial woman and picking up the pieces of the financially strapped company.

The episode starts with Liza (Sutton Foster) and Charles (Peter Hermann) acting in a true crime fantasy at an art museum according to the story on the popular Exonerated podcast.

From last week’s episode, investor Quinn (Laura Benanti) has been experiencing best-seller list bliss for the past three weeks to Kelsey’s dismay after the Lean In-like book, Claw, failed to reach audiences during a pre-sale experiment. Quinn notifies Kelsey about the book trending on Twitter and her plans to be interviewed for The Cut. She then requests Kelsey to interview her.

“How does the book everyone hated made it debut at No. 10 on the best-seller list and continues to rise?” Kelsey poses the question to Liza and Diana (Miriam Shor) after Quinn leaves her office. An smh moment.

They go into a meeting with Audrey Colbert (Willa Fitzgerald), the alleged murderess in the Exonerated podcast. Diana skips the meeting out of fear. “Do you think I did it?” Audrey asks an anxious Kelsey and Liza. She emphasizes she needs a publisher who trusts her and doesn’t think she committed the murders since she’s now an international supervillain. The book can clear her name. After the awkward meeting, Kelsey and Liza learn later that they weren’t the only ones being pitched Audrey’s book, but so was half the major publishers.

Audrey’s agent, the nosy Redmond (Michael Urie), later tells Kelsey that Claw has suspicious sales with bulk purchases and Chinese bots inserting the title all over social media. He lets them know that’s the real gossip on the street.

Kelsey and Liza approach Quinn at the fancy Ardmore Club, disbeliving she’s being blamed for phony sales. When they tell her they have evidence from their peers, Quinn admits she faked the best-selling novel for her senatorial campaign since that shiny New York Times best-selling sticker will be on every cover of her book. Kelsey says this will ruin the business while Quinn argues the book will pump millions into the company. Quinn then threatens Kelsey about showing up at The Cut event for the book.

“No one will work with us if we throw an author under the bus,” Liza says.

When Liza gets home, she finds papers on the dining room table listing prices for the home. She asks Charles why he’s moving money around, and he says he just needs to with his unemployment. Like in the previous two episodes, it seems like Charles and Kelsey’s sometimes beau Zane (Charles Michael Davis) are in cahoots as if they’ll create their own rival publishing house.

At The Cut event, everything seems to be going smoothly until the Q&A part of the fireside chat. One woman tells Kelsey and Quinn about the dagger next to Quinn’s best-selling status, and the dagger means suspicious bulk sales. Quinn laughingly says it’s due to colleges and universities requesting the book to use for syllabi, then she moves the spotlight to Kelsey.

Kelsey maintains her composure. She admits to the bulk sales, but they’re also due to forthcoming events as Quinn plans to throw her hat in the California Senate race. It sparks applause, when Quinn and Kelsey faux hug where Quinn threatens Kelsey about what she’s done since that type of announcement is reserved on a stage of higher magnitude. Kelsey just tells her to enjoy the applause.

The next day, Kelsey, Liza, and Diana learn Mercury nabbed the Audrey Colbert deal. They never heard of this competitor until Redmond lets them know Zane is the publisher of Mercury and the deal stands at $800,000. Their men were in cahoots building their own company! Then the episode ends with Liza’s eyes popping open because she knows Charles had something to do with it. Her boyfriend whom she got hooked onto Exonerated.

Yes, Kelsey’s and Liza’s love lives got more complicated with the clandestine creation of competitor Mercury by their men. An extra episode highlight is Nicole Ari Parker guest starring as a post-childbirth vagina support group leader who Maggie (Debi Mazar) meets after being traumatized by Josh’s (Nico Tortorella) green card wife having a baby in their Uber.

Book Review: ‘Bluebird, Bluebird’ by Attica Locke

Bluebird, Bluebird by Attica Locke

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

“Bluebird Bluebird” by Attica Locke is a well-constructed racial murder mystery set in small town Texas that nicely twists and turns with an ending that opens up to a potential sequel.

The story starts with Darren, a rare black Texas Ranger, defending himself on the stand for his response to an older black man shooting a known white supremacist in self-defense. While on probation, he learns that a body of a black man and a young white woman washed ashore two days apart in nearby Lark. He weasels himself into the investigation and learns the male victim had traveled from Chicago to give an ex-musician an old guitar as part of his uncle’s last wishes. Darren feels a close connection to the victim who had graduated from the law school he had once attended but didn’t finish, as his wife brings up a lot. It turns out the ex-musician, Joe Sweet, had been murdered years before in the diner owned by his 70-something wife, Geneva. It’s also the diner the female victim had been a waitress. As Darren puts together the pieces of the two victims and how their lives intertwined one night at the diner with its own controversial history, he tries to deal with what’s left of his career, his marriage, and his desire to solve the crime.

Though not a fan of racial murder mystery, I enjoyed this story because the pacing was even with flawed characters that are still likable. Also an FX drama is in the works, so it’ll be interesting to see how the characters leap off the page onto the screen.

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Book Review: ‘The Art of Gathering’ by Priya Parker

The Art of Gathering: How We Meet and Why It Matters by Priya Parker

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

They want to be there. They feel lucky to be there. They might well be considering giving the gathering their all. Your next task is to fuse people, to turn a motley collection of attendees into a tribe. A talented gatherer doesn’t hope for disparate people to become a group. She makes them a group.

“The Art of Gathering” by Priya Parker goes into detail about the elements of not just coordinating an event but making sure it’s a purposeful event for attendees. It sounds basic, but with examples from the author’s real-life experiences and public experiences, you realize these elements are not taken into consideration most of the time at the events you attend or plan.

I read this book because I’m active in so many organizations and sometimes want to offer my amateur services of coordinating an event. But I’ve clashed with a women’s group I’m involved in because they didn’t want the sense of sisterhood. With seeing other women’s groups succeed in attendance with members expressing their affection for the events and the groups, I felt sisterhood is a must with a hobby organization that usually meets on the weekend. It’s the solution to luring attendees to an event who would have to navigate Los Angeles traffic to get to an event they had to be at. And I realized you don’t really need guests that would be seen as celebrities; the group can fuse into a tribe and create a purposeful atmosphere.

When reading this book, I thought to myself I’m on the right track, but many others are not. The lack of purpose and connection destroys a lot of events where attendees or members dwindle, which the author emphasizes. She discusses how to open an event, how to close an event, and what to do in the middle. There’s even a section on how an event may be dying and how to resuscitate it during a break. One section sticks out when the author was at a friend’s funeral and the priest started the service with parking logistics amid everyone’s mourning. It showed the importance of the first words to be uttered to set the tone for an event. She also mentioned how she would end dinner parties with thanking everyone for coming as a hint it was time for them to go home. To resolve this, she and her husband would move the party from the dining room when everyone finished eating into the living room as a soft close. This created a break for the attendees who had to leave, though she would emphasize it was a part of the event, and the ones who stayed would talk and drink until everyone left on their own.

The author again expertly weaves so many personal events since she’s a founder of a transformative event planning agency with professional events. She also sprinkles events she read about in the media with picking out the elements in the article that the average reader probably did not notice. This book is a must-read if you’re interested in coordinating events with care or learning how to do so. It will be a useful guide that you’ll return to when planning events with purpose.

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Women authors donate to immigration nonprofit amid deportation reports

Jodi Picoult, Celeste Ng, and Mindy Kaling are some of the famous author voices who’ve donated to Refugee and Immigrant Center for Education and Legal Services amid reports the Trump administration plans massive deportations in two weeks.

Authors For Families seemed to have inspired the matching campaign to benefit the 501(c)(3) nonprofit known by its acronym RAICES, which is the largest immigration legal services provider in Texas. Asking for authors to donate services from query critiques to signed books for its next fundraiser in July, Authors For Families, a group of authors and publishing professionals raising money to reunite immigrant children with their parents, plans to raise money to also benefit National Court Appointed Special Advocate Association or CASA, Women’s Refugee Commission, Kids in Need of Defense or KIND, and The Florence Project.

Jodi Picoult, the best-selling author behind A Spark of Light and My Sister’s Keeper, tweeted she and her supporters raised $50,000 for RAICES.

I am stunned by the generosity of my followers, who responded loud and clear when I said I’d match donations yesterday to @RAICESTEXAS. By my count, together, we raised nearly $50k in mere hours. It’s a good reminder of how ordinary folks can effect change when we work together.

— Jodi Picoult (@jodipicoult) June 24, 2019

Celeste, whose two novels Everything I Never Told You and Little Fires Everywhere became runaway hits, was one of those supporters.

Pssst, the very generous @jodipicoult is matching donations to @RAICESTEXAS over the next 24hr—if you were thinking of donating, now’s a great time. Whatever you can give will go twice as far! https://t.co/7BqnFVMiV2

— Celeste Ng (@pronounced_ing) June 23, 2019

Circe author Madeline Miller continued matching with her supporters reaching $10,000 with her bump.

WOW. Thanks to your AMAZING donations, you raised $7,842 (!!!!) for @RAICESTEXAS! I’ve donated my match and a bit more to make our total a round 10K! You give me hope. Thank you for donating if you could, for signal boosting, speaking out, calling reps. We can make a difference. pic.twitter.com/dqS4hjHpmZ

— Madeline Miller (@MillerMadeline) June 24, 2019

Mindy, who celebrated her birthday Monday and recently announced an Amazon Publishing follow-up to Why Not Me? and Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me? (And Other Concerns), asked what causes she should donate to for her 40th birthday. She first donated $10,000 to RAICES.

I’m so grateful to have my wonderful, peaceful life w/ my daughter Katherine. How lucky am I to turn 40? I would love to express my gratitude by donating $1000 to 40 different charitable orgs that help others. Pls suggest some! I will kick it off by giving $1000 to @RAICESTEXAS!

— Mindy Kaling (@mindykaling) June 24, 2019

Last summer, RAICES raised $25 million after a photo of a 2-year-old girl at the border in a pink jacket crying up at adults went viral.

If you’re an author, do you have a passion you would use your platform for? Or how would you feel as a reader when your top authors stand on a platform you’re not for?

Book Launch: ‘More Than Enough’ by Elaine Welteroth

Elaine Welteroth, who reached prominence as the first black Teen Vogue editor and now as a Project Runway judge, stopped in Los Angeles Thursday for her book tour and discussed why she wrote the women empowerment memoir to an estimated 400-member audience.

What appeared to be a well-read black girl magic rally at the California African American Museum in Exposition Park started with the cheerful announcement that Elaine’s book had notched itself to the coveted New York Times Best Sellers list. She was then introduced by her former Teen Vogue colleague and friend Lynette Nylander, who conducted the fireside chat.

Right away, Elaine began reading from Chapter 16 in More Than Enough: Claiming Space For Who You Are (No Matter What They Say), which is dubbed “Disturbing the Peace,” which starts with a quote from Audre Lorde and describes how Elaine returned to work from a Christmas vacation from Rwanda for a surprise racial interaction. Her hair was braided into Senegalese twists down her waist—the first time she came to a corporate setting in an overly ethnic hairstyle—and a white female colleague in disbelief asked how her hair had allegedly grown feet over a short amount of time.

This question is sometimes posed to black women who decide to add synthetic or real hair to their braids for a new look to celebrate their heritage, so Elaine took it in stride after an inner dialogue berating the beauty industry for neglecting what is considered beautiful to women of color with telling the woman, “Oh, you of all people must know these are extensions.”

That set the tone for the evening: Elaine describing her humble background in the San Francisco Bay Area as a first-generation college graduate to a high-ranking editor in a magazine media empire. Starting her career in the beginning of the recession, she said she felt the weight of being “black, young, and female,” the trifecta of the media industry teeming with racism, ageism, and sexism.

“We all live in a 180-character world where we are scrolling each other’s success stories every day, and we’re only getting the shiny slice, we’re only getting the prettiest picture, we’re only getting the clearest caption,” she said. “I felt like I owed this community more than I can fit into a caption on Instagram about the most universal aspects of the success story. The parts that get left out from the messy relationships that so often intercept with how we show up in our careers.”

At 32, she said she feared her audience would doubt she was ready to write a memoir, even as her own brother echoed this sentiment soon after she submitted a manuscript questioning her reason to pen an “autobiography.”

“I wanted to throw the plate in his face,” she said of the interaction over a Christmas vacation while he was washing dishes in the kitchen. “I was so emotional because that was the very question that threatened to keep me from doing this and leave it to be my family—it’s always family—that are your harshest critics. At the time, I was so emotional I can only think to say, ‘They don’t even call it autobiographies anymore, you asshole!'”

A round of laughter erupted from the audience, but she continued with the true translation of that moment.

“Then later I really sat with it. I don’t blame my brother for asking that question. That’s the patriarchy talking. We’ve all been conditioned by this mindset that tells us, ‘Your stories are not valid if you look like me.'”

The two-hour event brought up more gems from Elaine’s book like her decision to attend a state university because the boy she was dating was supposed to be there but turned out to be in jail and how on her first Ebony photo shoot she had a serendipitous moment with the hairstylist who happened to be friends with her aunt.

Eso Won Books, the main black-owned bookstore in Los Angeles, was the official bookseller at the event.

‘Little Fires Everywhere’ rounds out casting for Hulu adaptation

Celeste Ng’s best-selling novel, Little Fires Everywhere, is gearing up for its TV debut as casting decisions are being finalized.

According to Deadline, the last major character from the book, Bebe Chow, has been casted and will be played by Chinese actress Huang Lu. Joshua Jackson, originally of Dawson’s Creek fame and recently of When They See Us, was also one of the last to round out the cast and will play Bill Richardson, the workaholic attorney patriarch of a family in crisis when the novel opens up to his youngest daughter, Isabella, missing as their home burns. Intricately weaving the tale of the Richardsons with matriarch Elena and the four children and their relationship with their new vagabondish tenants, Mia Warren and her daughter Pearl, the story also evolves into a custody fight between another two mothers that has divided Elena and Mia along with the 1990s Shaker Heights, Ohio community.

Before the novel was released in 2017, Reese Witherspoon bought the rights, which she had first done with Gone Girl. It has become her specialty: to buy the rights for television and film purposes before the book hits shelves. This time it will be with her Hello Sunshine brand, most known for its monthly book club. Currently starring in the second season of HBO’s Big Little Lies, which already reached the deadly ending of Liane Moriarty’s novel of the same name, Reese is working on the Little Fires Everywhere project with Scandal star Kerry Washington.

This will be Kerry’s first major project with her production company, Simpson Street. It was behind her most recent Broadway play, American Son, which is the debut of playwright Christopher Demos-Brown and directed by Tony Award winner Kenny Leon.

Celeste, Reese, and Kerry will be executive producers for the eight-episode limited series. According to IMDB and Deadline, the casting for the major characters are complete.

Elena Richardson will be played by Reese Witherspoon.

Mia Warren will be played by Kerry Washington.

Pearl Warren will be played by Lexi Underwood.

Bill Richardson will be played by Joshua Jackson.

Izzy Richardson will be played by Megan Stott.

Lexie Richardson will be played by Jade Pettyjohn.

Trip Richardson will be played by Jordan Elsass.

Moody Richardson will be played by Gavin Lewis.

Bebe Chow will be played by Huang Lu.

Linda McCullough will be played by Rosemarie DeWitt.

Restaurant manager (where Mia and Bebe work) will be played by Paul Yen.

Little Fires Everywhere landed at Hulu following a multiple-outlet bidding war and will also be under the umbrella of ABC Signature Studios along with Hello Sunshine and Simpson Street. Liz Tigelaar (Casual, Life Unexpected), Lauren Neustadter, Pilar Savone and Lynn Sheldon will all executive produce. Award-winning mystery novelist Attica Locke is also one of the writers, as seen in the show’s Instagram account, fresh from working on Ava DuVernay’s When They See Us.

“At Hello Sunshine, we strive to shine a light on female-driven stories that are rooted in inspiration, emotion and truth – all of which form the bedrock of Celeste Ng’s ingenious work,” Reese said in the March 2018 Hulu press release first announcing the project. “Hulu has a rich history of transforming groundbreaking literature into groundbreaking television, and we are confident that their talented team will use this story to spur a long-overdue dialogue around race, class, and what it means to be a mother. With Kerry Washington, Liz Tigelaar and now Hulu, Hello Sunshine has brought together a dream lineup of creative collaborators, and we are privileged and humbled to have the opportunity to work with them to bring this important project to life.”

“As producers, we at Simpson Street are so proud to be part of this team to tell this extraordinary story inspired by Celeste Ng’s phenomenal novel and we are thrilled to be embarking on this journey with Hulu,” Kerry said in a press release. “As an actress, I am floored to have the opportunity to work alongside Reese Witherspoon exploring the rich themes of this story playing these dynamic characters.”