One of Hollywood’s most dazzling young directors, Barry Jenkins burst to notoriety with his 2016 film Moonlight, which won the Academy Award for Best Picture. It was only his second feature film. Now the 39-year-old director returns with a new film that is already receiving Oscar-buzz. Adapted from the James Baldwin novel, If Beale Street Could Talk is a powerful, beautiful story of love and injustice. Here, Jenkins shares an insightful conversation with GQ’s Jim Nelson, discussing, among other things, Baldwin’s gift for storytelling, Jenkins’s creative routines, and the work he’s doing now to adapt Colson Whitehead’s novel The Underground Railroadfor the screen.