Carmen Maria Machado’s stories of haunted prom dresses, Faustian weight-loss surgeries, and a “Law & Order: Special Victims Unit” populated by “doppelgängers, ghosts, and girls with bells for eyes” are making their way to FX. According to Deadline, a series based on Machado’s award-winning short story collection, “Her Body and Other Parties,” is currently in development at the cabler. The project hails from “Feud” writer Gina Welch, Imagine Television, and FX Productions.
Titled “Her Body,” the show “is an anthological series staging psychologically vivid tales of women’s fears and desires on landscapes of horror, fabulism, and wild-haired absurdity,” the source reveals. “It’s described as a feminist ‘Black Mirror’ with fairy tale themes, its hours threaded together with a recurring ensemble of female characters.”
Welch will write and exec produce the adaptation. Machado is producing.
Welch received a WGA Award nod for co-writing “Feud.” She also co-produced Ryan Murphy’s take on the legendary rivalry between Joan Crawford and Bette Davis. Welch’s other writer-producer credits include “Castle Rock” and “The Terror,” and she served as a staff writer on “Ray Donovan.”
The much-lauded “Her Body and Other Parties” was a finalist for the National Book Award, the Kirkus Prize, and the PEN/Robert W. Bingham Prize, among other accolades. The collection won the National Book Critics Circle’s John Leonard Prize, the Bard Fiction Prize, the Lambda Literary Award for Lesbian Fiction, and the Shirley Jackson Award. The tome was published by Gray Wolf Press last October.
Machado’s first memoir, “In the Dream House,” is expected in fall 2019. Her work has been published in The New Yorker, The New York Times, Tin House, McSweeney’s, and more.
