Yanga: The Prince of Veracruz

The story

Yanga: The Prince of Veracruz brings to life the true story of Gaspar Yanga — remembered as one of the first liberators of the Americas. Around 1570, Yanga led enslaved Africans in an escape from a sugarcane plantation in colonial Veracruz, Mexico, and built a free settlement high in the mountains near Córdoba. For nearly forty years his community farmed, defended itself, and freed others — until, in 1609, Yanga negotiated their freedom and the right to self-rule, founding San Lorenzo de los Negros: among the first free Black towns in the Americas. The town of Yanga, Veracruz still carries his name today.

The project

Yanga arrived at Atlas as a screenplay from writer Andrew Williams — a sweeping, cinematic story written for the screen. Our task was to adapt it into a full-length published book that stands entirely on its own: preserving the scope and drama of the film while giving readers the history, interior life, and emotion only a novel can deliver. The book is published and available, and the story is in active development as a feature film.

What Atlas did

• Screenplay-to-novel adaptation & manuscript development
• Historical research and editorial refinement
• Cover and interior design
• Publishing and worldwide distribution
• Launch positioning to build momentum toward the film

Why it matters

Yanga is exactly the kind of ambitious, cross-medium work Atlas takes on — a story that deserved to exist as a book, told with the care its history demands. It's a working example of what our screenplay-to-book approach can do for any author sitting on a story with the power to reach both the page and the screen.