It’s a pretty big accomplishment for a first-time author to land on the New York Times bestsellers list, but Isabel Wilkerson definitely deserves it. The Pulitzer-prize winning journalist spent 15 years researching and conducted over 1,200 interviews for The Warmth of Other Suns, an account of the men and women who lived through the Great Migration, when 6 million African-Americans moved to the North.
One of the biggest challenges the author says she faced was time. ” I tried to find the oldest members of this migration and capture a range of experiences,” she explained in the latest Mediabistro feature.
“One of the men I chose, the one from Florida, was keenly aware that he was speaking to unborn generations of people. He took it very seriously. At one point he said, ‘If you don’t hurry up and finish this book, I’m gonna be proofreading from heaven.’ And he was right. He didn’t live to see the book.”
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New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.
After penning over 30 self-help titles and novels (two of which became New York Times bestsellers) and producing films like Jumping The Broom and the highly anticipated Sparkle remake starring the late Whitney Houston, Bishop T.D. Jakes has become a true force in Hollywood. But his breakthrough into the media bizz was anything but conventional.
In his Mediabistro So What Do You Do? interview, Jakes gave some valuable advice for writers and authors looking to break into the film biz.
“The old adage is it’s not what you know but who you know. I think that’s very, very important. There are a lot of people who know the ‘what’ of it but don’t know the ‘who’ of it. Everything advances through relationships, and the better you build strong relationships, the more opportunity you’re going to have.”
So, what makes a script great for TDJ Enterprises? “I think it has to be something that has a message,” he said.
Read the full interview in So What Do You Do, Bishop T.D. Jakes?
– Andrea Hackett
New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.
Woo hoo!
Stacy Curtis just emailed me to let me know that the cookbook I illustrated is on a New York Times Best Sellers List. Thanks Stacy! Stacy also has a book on the New York Times Best Seller's Picture Book List, so I am in good company.
That's great news to finish off a nice Sunday afternoon.
CHAPTER BOOKS
1 THE GRAVEYARD BOOK, by Neil Gaiman. Illustrated by Dave McKean. (HarperCollins, $17.99.) To avoid a killer, a boy lives in a cemetery. (Ages 10 and up) 2
2 DIARY OF A WIMPY KID, written and illustrated by Jeff Kinney. (Amulet/Abrams, $12.95.) The travails of adolescence, in cartoons. (Ages 9 to 12) 78
3 THE MAZE OF BONES, by Rick Riordan. (Scholastic, $12.99.) A brother and sister hunt for the source of their family’s power; Book 1 of a new series, “The 39 Clues.” (Ages 8 to 12) 5
4 DIARY OF A WIMPY KID: RODRICK RULES, by Jeff Kinney. (Amulet/Abrams, $12.95.) How Greg embarrassed himself on his vacation; a sequel to “Diary of a Wimpy Kid.” (Ages 9 to 12) 39
5 THE WAY WE WORK, by David Macaulay with Richard Walker. (Lorraine/Houghton Mifflin, $35.) Getting to know the human body. (Ages 9 to 12) 1
6 PAULA DEEN’S MY FIRST COOKBOOK, by Paula Deen with Martha Nesbit. Illustrated by Susan Mitchell. (Simon & Schuster, $21.99.) Recipes for the very young. (Ages 4 to 8) 1
7 THE HUNGER GAMES, by Suzanne Collins. (Scholastic, $17.99.) In a dystopian future, a girl fights for survival on live TV. (Ages 12 and up) 5
8 NATION, by Terry Pratchett. (HarperCollins, $16.99.) Two young survivors of a tsunami slowly forge a new society. (Ages 12 and up) 2
9 THE ABSOLUTELY TRUE DIARY OF A PART-TIME INDIAN, by Sherman Alexie. Illustrated by Ellen Forney. (Little, Brown, $16.99.) A boy leaves his reservation for an all-white school. (Ages 12 and up) 47
10 THE INVENTION OF HUGO CABRET, written and illustrated by Brian Selznick. (Scholastic, $22.99.) An orphan deciphers his father’s last message. (Ages 9 to 12) 80
Congratulations! That's extremely exciting for you.
Number 7 that amazing Susan.....Congratulations.
Congrats! I saw Paula Deen on The View, and they did a little session with a couple of girls to show how easy the recipes were. They showed the book and I think they might have used some of the illos for background on the set. It looked like a fun book!