Lynn Shelton Is Up for a Posthumous Emmy

When Seattle director Lynn Shelton died this May, at 54, of a blood disorder, it came as a particular shock to this city’s arts community. Her movies, like Humpday and We Go Way Back, were rooted in this place in a way that so many others set here are not. She went on to a successful career directing TV episodes (Mad Men, Glow, New Girl, Love), initially just to pay the bills. But her final project, Hulu’s Little Fires Everywhere, combined her movies’ curiosity for character with Hollywood scale. The adaptation of Celeste Ng’s novel digs into race and class and gender in a 1990s suburb—with satire and plenty of melodrama.

Today, Shelton got nominated for an Emmy Award: Outstanding Directing for a Limited Series, Movie, or Dramatic Special, for the show’s finale, “Find a Way.“ She was also an executive producer and directed half of the series’ eight episodes, including the pilot. She told Vanity Fair last year that working on the show, which feels more like a long movie than typical episodic TV, was something she relished: “It’s probably the biggest opportunity I’ve had.”