Antoinette Nwandu has signed on to pen Amazon Studios’ film adaptation of “Wash Clean the Bones,” a short story from Nafissa Thompson-Spires’ acclaimed 2018 collection, “Heads of the Colored People.” Deadline broke the news.

Described as an interrogation of “our supposedly post-racial era,” Thompson-Spires’ debut “exposes the violence, both external and self-inflicted, that threatens black Americans, no matter their apparent success,” according to the book’s synopsis. 

“Wash Clean the Bones” tells the story of a churchgoing nurse whose “outlook on life – particularly that of her infant son – is upended after her side-gig as a funeral singer lands her at the graveside of several young boys who’ve fallen victim to gun violence,” Deadline details.

“Heads of the Colored People” was longlisted for the National Book Award for Fiction and a finalist for the Kirkus Prize.

Nwandu writes for Netflix’s “She’s Gotta Have It” series. Her plays include “Pass Over” and “Breach: a manifesto on race in america through the eyes of a black girl recovering from self-hate.” The Whiting Award, the Paula Vogel Playwriting Award, and the Lorraine Hansberry Playwriting Award are among her honors. Her plays have been included on the 2016 and 2017 Kilroys lists.

Asked what areas of culture influence her work, Nwandu said, “Definitely current events, definitely art. I feel like being a writer and existing in the world is kind of like being a giant whale with the baleen that just like hangs down from their mouth. And it’s just like that netting where they open their mouths and all the seawater comes in, and then anything that they need to eat gets caught in the baleen, and then they’re just like constantly eating. I feel like that’s exactly what being a writer is like,” she observed. “That just anything, whether it’s a random conversation, or I’m always saving news clippings and stories, or just an interaction with a person, or a song that you hear, a poem that you read — that all just kind of gets mashed together in the brain.”