Mara Brock Akil, veteran showrunner, writer and producer best known for creating hit series “Girlfriends,” “The Game” and “Forever,” is set to debut her first novel, “The Revelation of Dionne Daphne.”
The novel will be released on Storehouse Voices, an imprint of Crown Publishing, on June 30, 2026. Pre-orders for the book are available now.
Per the logline, “The novel sees Dionne Daphne, a magnetic heroine navigating a whirlwind of emotions, buried secrets, and profound personal awakening. Dionne has everything a modern, thirty-something NYC woman in the 90s could dream of. She is the beauty editor at a prestigious magazine, with a social life of the upper echelon, and a boyfriend that could have been plucked out of its pages. But all of this comes crashing down, when he arrives at her Brooklyn doorstep with life-threatening news that creates a crack in the facade of her picture-perfect life.”
“The pressure to face this new reality spins Dionne into her past, unearthing a dark secret that she has hidden since childhood. What follows is an emotionally enthralling novel about enduring love, world-shattering revelations, and self-awakening,” the description continues. “‘The Revelation of Dionne Daphne’ is at once a deeply moving and provocatively gripping novel that shows when you dig deep enough into the shadows of your life, light can be revealed. It’s a novel of broken lovers, fractured family, and distant friendships all making their way back to one another.”
In a Tuesday statement, Brock Akil said she hopes readers can connect with Dionne’s journey through “isolation, shame, resilience and the redemptive power of love.”
“My hope is that readers will see themselves in Dionne and recognize the weight they’ve been holding, and feel permission to release it,” she said. “Stepping into fiction as a novelist has been a beautiful journey for me, expanding my storytelling into a new form and discovering what revelation looks like on the page and I am so grateful to have Storehouse Voices alongside me on this new journey.”
Brock Akil, whose work in Hollywood spans over 25 years, was honored by the African American Film Critics Association with the TV Honors Legacy Award in 2025. On Saturday, the Producers Guild of America will grant her with the Norman Lear Achievement Award. This all follows the success of her latest series “Forever” on Netflix, which reached No. 1 on the streamer and is set to return for a second season.
