Nishi Shawl on Octavia Butler talk

photo by Caren Corley

Last weekend, I was lucky enough to catch Nisi Shawl giving a talk on Octavia E. Butler at the Woodson Library: a crossover event with One Book One Chicago and Black History Month.

I've been fortunate enough to catch Nisi's talks a couple times, at Wiscon and ConFusion, and it was great to hear her thoughts on Butler. Brief notes below, mistakes all mine:

• Shawl references her interview with Butler in Strange Matings by Aqueduct Press. She first met Butler in 1999.
• Butler believed in living her dreams, how does that translate? Butler's now-famous "I shall be a best-selling writer" and other notes to self. Shawl also talks about Butler's writing advice from "Furor Scribendi" in Bloodchild and Other Stories.
• Butler was the first SF author to get the MacArthur grant, used it to buy a house so she could write without worrying about rent. Butler took many "jobs that didn't make her smile" to support herself as a writer. Shawl talks about the importance Butler placed on persistence.

Megatext 2: Octavia Butler

Megatext 2: Octavia Butler

Thursday, August 25th, 7pm

Open Books, 651 W. Lake St.
(Facebook Event Page)

For our second Megatext discussion, we're going to be talking about Octavia E. Butler (1946-2008), who's had a powerful impact on the genre. This discussion is being supported by Open Books, who are hosting, and by Think Galactic.

The idea behind the "Megatext" book club is that we talk about an author as a whole, rather than one specific book. Feel free to come if you've read everything Butler's written, if you've only read one book, or if you're just interested!

photo via Joshua Trujillo

Think Galactic- Octavia's Brood

For the last Think Galactic meeting of 2015, we discussed the collection "Octavia's Brood", edited by Walidah Imarisha and adrienne maree brown.

The collection brings together writers who are active in social justice movements, many of who don't normally work in the short SF/F form, to pay tribute to the kind of "visionary fiction" embodied in the work of Octavia Butler.

We were a bit split over the collection as a whole. We all agreed that we liked the idea of the project and the ideas being engaged with. However, some of us found the execution extremely weak in many (though not all) of the stories. An interesting discussion.

We closed the discussion by making our own list of transformative or visionary fiction, and also selected books for the first half of next year.

Weird & Wonderful: Kindred

Much-delayed meeting notes! The last convocation of City Lit Books' "Weird & Wonderful" reading group discussed Octavia Butler's "Kindred" (1979), now considered a classic--probably why the Classic SF Meetup discussed it a while back.


In the novel, a modern black woman is mysteriously transported back to the early 19th century to save a drowning boy, who she later deduces is her ancestor. Dana is then transported back and forth several times--called back to save Rufus Weylin whenever his life is in danger, and sent forward to her own time whenever her life is in peril.

"Kindred" is almost certainly Butler's most-discussed work (I first ran into it in an undergrad lit class SO LONG AGO), which is interesting given how "non-genre" this reads. Unlike Butler's other works, which are clearly "genre" (aliens, vampires, post-apocalypse, etc.), "Kindred" purposefully downplays its one weird element--the time travel--allowing it read more as a mainstream, literary novel. At group we talked about shelving and genre decisions, how that affects how people read; I'm vastly amused to imagine slow, passive-aggressive category debates carried out by furtive re-shelvers.

Other things we discussed in relation to the novel:

Classic SF Meetup: Kindred

I can't often attend the Classic SF Meetup, as it's usually scheduled for the same time as Think Galactic. (And the Forest Park Speculative Fiction group. And the Suburban Fantasy Meetup. 2nd Thursdays are over-booked!)

However, once in a while the schedules diverge, as happened last week, so I got to attend the discussion of Octavia Butler's 1979 novel "Kindred". Possible spoilers below!