Perigee Takes Advice from Beckerman
Agent Lynn Johnston, of Lynn Johnston Literary, sold world rights to a new memoir by columnist and mommy blogger Tracy Beckerman to Maria Gagliano at Perigee. Beckerman blogs at lostinsuburbia.net, and also has a syndicated column, under the same name, that’s carried by over 400 newspapers. (The column appeared first, and then the blog.) Beckerman self-published her first book, Rebel Without a Minivan, in 2008. In 2010 Beckerman won Lifetime Television’s Balancing Act blogging competition, after the channel searched for female bloggers and opened the judging up to its audience.

Da Capo Does ‘Black Swan’
Renee Sedliar at Da Capo took world rights to Ballet Beautiful by former dancer Mary Helen Bowers. Agent Matthew Elblonk, at DeFiore & Co., brokered the deal for Bowers, who trained Natalie Portman for her starring role in the film Black Swan. (Bowers, a former ballerina, is not to be confused with the woman who sparked controversy by claiming Portman did little actual dancing on film—that was Portman’s body double, Sarah Lane.) Portman is writing the foreword to the book and Da Capo is planning a spring 2012 publication.

Page to Screen
Lifetime Television is adapting Jeff Benedict’s Little Pink House: A True Story of Defiance and Courage, with Brooke Shields attached as executive producer and star. Grand Central published the nonfiction book in 2009—Rick Wolff acquired and edited—and it explores a landmark eminent domain case that made it to the Supreme Court. The case centers on an attempt by the New London Development Corporation, working on behalf of drug giant Pfizer, to seize a number of homes in Trumbull, Conn., in order to build a new factory. One holdout, an EMT and recent divorcée named Susette Kelo, organized her neighbors and other community members in the protracted David and Goliath legal battle. Michael R. Goldstein and Michael G. Larkin, of Larkin-Goldstein Productions, are also attached as executive producers.

In a second deal, producers James Brown and Lex Lutzus, at London-based Neon Park, bought film rights to Lisa Genova’s Still Alice (Gallery Books). The 2009 debut follows a high-powered psychology professor at Harvard who discovers she has early onset Alzheimer’s. (Genova, a neuroscientist, mined heavily from her own work for the novel.) Steve Fisher at Agency for the Performing Arts (APA) brokered the deal for agent Vicky Bijur; Lutzus and Brown have produced such films as I Am Love, which stars Tilda Swinton, and the award-winning Israeli film, Lebanon.

Briefs
Science fiction and fantasy press Candlemark & Gleam took world rights to the first book by Matt Adams. Adams did not use an agent in the deal with C&G’s Kate Sullivan. The superhero novel, I, Crimsonstreak is about lightning-fast Chris Fairborne, or Crimsonstreak, who is sent to an insane asylum after being framed for a crime by his father, the villainous Colonel Chaos. After he escapes, Crimsonstreak finds that the world he knew is gone, and in its place is a fascist state run by Colonel Chaos. The novel is due out in paperback in May 2012.