Sarah Jessica Parker is making her mark on the literary world. The Emmy and Golden Globe-winning actress has a new job title: she’s the editorial director of SJP for Hogarth, her own book imprint. The New York Times reports that Parker has acquired her first manuscript, Fatima Farheen Mirza’s debut novel, tentatively titled “A Place for Us.”
Mirza is a graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. Her manuscript centers on an Indian-American family that comes together “on the eve of the eldest daughter, Hadia’s, wedding. [The story] tackles issues of belonging and tradition, delving into the complex experience of an immigrant family in the United States,” the source details.
“I was thunderstruck by how timely this book was and that it’s not intentionally so. She hasn’t written a treatise on the state of American geopolitical affairs, but she’s feeling something, and her family is,” observed Parker. The “Sex and the City” alumna explained that she’s invested in “voices from far away, people who are different, people from other lands that seem as distant as can be and voices and cultures that are unfamiliar.”
The focus of Parker’s imprint will be literary fiction. “It’s in large part due to my mother and the fiction she read,” Parker shared. When she was first approached about the imprint, the “Divorce” actress wasn’t immediately keen on the idea. She was hesitant because she had “far too much respect for the world of publishing and for writers to enter into that conversation casually.” Parker eventually decided to take the plunge because reading and libraries are her “life’s great pleasure.”
To that end, Parker is also joining forces with the American Library Association on their Book Club Central initiative. She’ll recommend four books per year, and she’s already announced her first pick: Stephanie Powell Watts’ “No One Is Coming to Save Us,” a re-imagining of “The Great Gatsby.”
“I think so many of us were raised in libraries,” Parker said. “They are, for many people in this country, a place of shelter. They’re a safe place for children to learn, to have access to things they don’t have in their own homes. For us growing up it was always the air-conditioned place to spend the summer.”
“I know that in terms of programming for female voices, we got to be part of creating a signal for it in some way,” Parker has said of her time on HBO’s “Sex and the City.” “But we were also part of a network that wanted that; that was supportive of [women] and that let us tell our story any way we wanted.” She added, “It’s nice to see how many women are doing interesting, exciting things on television. My guess is that would’ve happened [even without ‘Sex and the City’], but it’s nice that people associate us with being part of that change.”
Parker currently stars on another HBO series, “Divorce,” created by “Catastrophe’s” Sharon Horgan. The comedy has been renewed for a second but no word on a premiere date just yet.
