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African American Literature Book Club - The #1 Site for "Readers of Black Literature" |
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Octavia E. Butler writes: "I'm a 48-year-old writer who can
remember being a 10-year-old writer and who expects someday to be an 80-year-old writer.
I'm also comfortably asocial -- a hermit in the middle of Los Angeles -- a pessimist if
I'm not careful, a feminist, a Black, a former Baptist, an oil-and-water combination of
ambition, laziness, insecurity, certainty, and drive.
I've had ten novels published so far: Patternmaster, Mind of my Mind, Survivor, Kindred, Wild Seed, Clay's Ark, Dawn, Adulthood Rites, Imago, and Parable of the Sower, as well as a collection of my shorter work, entitled Bloodchild. I've also had short stories published in anthologies and magazines. One, "Speech Sounds," won a Hugo Award as best short story of 1984. Another, "Bloodchild," won both the 1985 Hugo and the 1984 Nebula awards as best novelette."—Octavia Butler
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Of Special Note: In 1995 Octavia E. Butler was awarded a MacArthur Grant. In what is popularly called the genius program, the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation rewards creative people who push the boundaries of their fields.
Above personal statement from www.warnerbooks.com
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Hardcover: 304 pages Afro-Future Females: Black Writers Chart Science Fiction’s Newest New-Wave Trajectory, edited by Marleen S. Barr, is the first combined science fiction critical anthology and short story collection to focus upon black women via written and visual texts. The volume creates a dialogue with existing theories of Afro-Futurism in order to generate fresh ideas about how to apply race to science fiction studies in terms of gender. The contributors, including Hortense Spillers, Samuel R. Delany, Octavia E. Butler, and Steven Barnes, formulate a woman-centered Afro-Futurism by repositioning previously excluded fiction to redefine science fiction as a broader fantastic endeavor. They articulate a platform for scholars to mount a vigorous argument in favor of redefining science fiction to encompass varieties of fantastic writing and, therefore, to include a range of black women’s writing that would otherwise be excluded. Afro-Future Females builds upon Barr’s previous work in black science fiction and fills a gap in the literature. It is the first critical anthology to address the "blackness" of outer space fiction in terms of feminism, emphasizing that it is necessary to revise the very nature of a genre that has been constructed in such a way as to exclude its new black participants. Black science fiction writers alter genre conventions to change how we read and define science fiction itself. The work’s main point: black science fiction is the most exciting literature of the nascent twenty-first century. About the Editor: Marleen S. Barr
ISBN: 1583226907 Fledgling, Octavia Butler's first new novel in seven years, is the story of an apparently young, amnesiac girl whose alarmingly un-human needs and abilities lead her to a startling conclusion: she is in fact a genetically modified, 53-year-old vampire. Forced to discover what she can about her stolen former life, she must at the same time learn who wanted-and still wants-to destroy her and those she cares for, and how she can save herself. Fledgling is a captivating novel that tests the limits of "otherness" and questions what it means to be truly human.
Randy Ross (Editor)
Paperback: 190 pages Griots Beneath the Baobab, the latest anthology published by International Black Writers and Artists of Los Angeles (IBWA-LA), honors the creative spirit of some of America's most insightful griots—by way of L.A. Griots features powerful stories by noted, award-winning, and best-selling writers Donald Bakeer, Octavia E. Butler, Wanda Coleman, Stanley Crouch, Eric Jerome Dickey, Sikivu Hutchinson, Silas Jones, Erin Aubry Kaplan, Gary Phillips, Randy Ross, Jervey Tervalon, and Ellery Washington.
AALBC.com Top 10 Seller October 2000 Format: Paperback, 752pp. The classic trilogy complete in one volume: Dawn, Adulthood Rites, and Imago The acclaimed trilogy that comprises Lilith's Brood is multiple Hugo and Nebula award-winner Octavia E. Butler at her best. Presenting three complete novels in one volume, Lilith's Brood is a profoundly evocative, sensual--and disturbing--epic of human transformation. Lilith Iyapo is in the Andes, mourning the death of her family, when
war destroys Earth. Centuries later, she is resurrected--by miraculously
powerful unearthly beings, the Oankali. Driven by an irresistible need to
heal others, the Oankali are rescuing our dying planet by merging
genetically with mankind. But Lilith and all humanity must now share the
world with uncanny, unimaginably alien creatures: their own children.
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 Parable
of the TalentsClick to order via Amazon Publisher: Seven Stories Press In this long-awaited novel, Butler revisits familiar themes of a society in 2032 whose very fabric has been torn, and where the basic physical and emotional needs of people seem almost impossible to meet. 30,000 first print. |
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 KindredClick to order via Amazon Author: with Robert Crossley (Introduction) "One of my personal favorites" —AALBC.com founder Troy Johnson Dana, a modern black woman, is celebrating her twenty-sixth birthday with her new husband when she is snatched abruptly from her home in California and transported to the antebellum South. With more than 100,000 copies in print, Kindred is a classic time travel novel by an acclaimed African-American science fiction writer.
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 The
Parable of the SowerClick to order via Amazon Publisher: Warner Books, Incorporated A stirring portrait of 21st-century America by the author of Wild Seed. Forced to flee an America where anarchy and violence have completely taken over, empath Lauren Olamina--who can feel the pain of others and is crippled by it--becomes a prophet carrying the hope of a new world and a new faith christened "Earthseed." Previous publisher: Four Walls/Eight Windows. |
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 DawnClick to order via Amazon Publisher: Warner Books, Incorporated Lilith lyapo awoke from a centuries-long sleep to find herself aboard the vast spaceship of the Oankali. Creatures covered in writhing tentacles, the Oankali had saved every surviving human from a dying, ruined Earth. They healed the planet, cured cancer, increased strength, and were now ready to help Lilith lead her people back to Earth--but for a price. |
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 Adulthood
RitesClick to order via Amazon Publisher: Warner Books, Incorporated Told in the haunting voice of Lilith, the heroine of "Dawn", this book is thestory of Lilith's only son, Akin. Though he resembles a normal human, Akin isthe first "construct"--part man/part alien. |
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 Clay's
ArkClick to order via Amazon Publisher: Warner Books, Incorporated |
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 Mind
of My MindClick to order via Amazon Publisher: Warner Books, Incorporated For 4,000 years, an immortal has spread the seeds of a master race, using the downtrodden as his private breeding stock. But now a young ghetto telepath has found a way to awaken--and rule--her superhuman kind, igniting a psychic battle as she challenges her creator for her right to free her people. |
Afro-Future Females: Black Writers Chart Science Fiction's Newest
New-Wave Trajectory
Fledgling
Griots Beneath the Baobab:
Tales from Los Angeles
Bloodchild:
And Other StoriesRelated Links
Click here for more titles by Octavia Butler
Voices From the Gaps
http://english.cla.umn.edu/lkd/vfg/Authors/OctaviaButler
Warner Books
http://pathfinder.com/twep/aspect/authors/octavia_e_butler/
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