Hulu has earned the rights to Sheila Heti’s upcoming book, which is written in alphabetical order. Yes, you read that right.
According to The Hollywood Reporter, the Disney-owned streamer is adapting the book into a series titled The Alphabetical Diaries. Hunting Lane, the production company behind HBO’s I Know This Much Is True, and feature films Holler, Captain Fantastic, and Blue Valentine, is behind the project. The company’s Jamie Patricof and Katie McNeill are producing.
The project itself has been a decade in the making. Heti combed through the past decade of her typed journals to see whether she’d changed since she’d started writing them, wondering not how should a person be but how a person is. Heti approached her investigation in a characteristically inventive, Oulipian way, she imported her diaries into Excel, sorted the sentences in alphabetical order, and searched for patterns and repetitions.
Heti’s writing spans a variety of genres, including plays, short fiction, and novels. She has contributed to periodicals including Flare, London Review of Books, Brick, Open Letters, Maisonneuve, Bookforum, n+1, the Look, McSweeney’s, and the New York Times. Heti’s books have been published internationally, including France, Italy, Germany, Spain, The Netherlands, Sweden, and Denmark.
