Abrams ComicArts has acquired the rights to develop and adapt Octavia E. Butler's award-winning science fiction novel Kindred as a graphic novel.  Currently, it is slated for publication in Fall 2014.

Originally published in 1979, Kindred is the story of a young African American woman who is transported from modern day California back into the Antebellum South.  Winner of the 2012 World Book Night selection, Kindred has sold over half a million copies and has become a mainstay in high school and college curricula for its discussion of race and gender.  Butler was the first science fiction author to win a MacArthur Fellowship.  She later obtained the PEN Lifetime Achievement, Nebula, Hugo, and other prestigious awards.

The adaptation will be written by Damian Duffy, a doctoral candidate in Library and Information Systems at the University of Illinois Chicago, and illustrated by John Jennings, Associate Professor of Visual Studies at SUNY Buffalo.  Together, they have collaborated on Black Comix: African American Independent Comics Art & Culture and the graphic novel The Hole: Consumer Culture.

Kindred will be edited by Carol Burrell, who recently moved to ComicArts from Lerner (see "Lerner Appoints Karre & Hinz to Head Graphic Universe Imprint").

--Nathan Wilson