Swan Song
Hiba TahirLauren Wakefield, Author, writer, process, Writing, Swan Song, Capote, Kelleigh Greenberg-Jephcott, Truman CapoteComment

Kelleigh Greenberg-Jephcott on Writing Swan Song

Author Kelleigh Greenberg-Jephcott’s start in screenwriting and directing fostered an early interest in adaptation.

“I was always interested in the art of adapting works of literature for the screen,” Greenberg-Jephcott said. She related a life-changing incident from 2006. 

“I was in a villa in Provence having received a fellowship for a Tolstoy adaptation I’d written, and was inspired by authors present to try my hand at prose fiction,” Greenberg-Jephcott recalled. “I had a childhood passion for Capote and was intrigued by the women he called his Swans, who kept cropping up in the Clarke and Plimpton biographies, as well as in Truman’s work. I knew what I had in mind for their collective and individual narratives was too expansive a tale for a feature film—even a series risked not fully capturing their unique voices.  I began what would become a ten year process of research and gestation.”

Hiba TahirLauren Wakefield, Author, writer, process, Writing, Swan Song, Capote, Kelleigh Greenberg-Jephcott, Truman CapoteComment
Kelleigh Greenberg-Jephcott on Writing Swan Song
The Designer's ProcessMary Ryan Karnesbook, cover, design, Lauren Wakefield, Swan SongComment

Wakefield’s Swan Song Cover Captures a Capote Moment 

A good cover conceals and reveals a book’s content. It spills just enough narrative to interest potential readers, but it leaves much to the imagination. Consider Lauren Wakefield’s recent cover for Kelleigh Greenberg-Jephcott’s Swan Song a primer in walking the line between closure and exposure: dichromatic scallops envelop a near-faceless woman’s poised body, the sharp line of her cigarette disrupting the rounded pattern. Then the title, big and bold and white, enchants us with just enough late-1950s flair to transport us to a smokier, sexier era. Only a cover this demure will do for a book about Truman Capote and his relationships with a group of elite, secretive society women he dubbed his ‘swans.’ After several initial visuals—some too vague and some too on-the-nose—Wakefield created a cover that recalls the charm and darkness of Capote’s social circles.

The Designer's ProcessMary Ryan Karnesbook, cover, design, Lauren Wakefield, Swan SongComment
Wakefield’s Swan Song Cover Captures a Capote Moment