A terrific blog post by Rashida J. Smith in which she shares memories of working with Octavia E. Butler and talks about the reading last Friday in Seattle to honor Ms. Butler’s legacy .
Reading Report: Honoring the Legacy of Octavia E. Butler | No Inside Voice.
Last night I had the privilege of participating in a reading in honor of the late Octavia E. Butler at Wayward Coffeehouse here in Seattle.
NORTHWEST WRITERS HONOR LEGACY OF OCTAVIA E. BUTLER was put together by the incomparable Caren Gussoff to support the recently released anthology “Bloodchildren: Stories by the Octavia E. Butler Scholars. ” The anthology, in turn, is to suppor the Octavia E Butler Scholarship organized by the Carl Brandon Society. I’ve blogged about Octavia’s importance to Clarion (and science fiction genre) here before, but, in short, the scholarship supports the attendance of one writer who has been accepted into any of the Clarion workshops (West, South, San Diego) and might otherwise not be able to attend.
I can’t even begin to describe Octavia’s influence in my writing. Fresh off the Patternmaster series I realized that this was the kind of writing I could aspire to. As Caren said in one of her introductions, reading Octavia’s work left a young, impressionable writer thinking: “We can do THIS?!”
Akopos 