An all-star lineup will pay tribute to Octavia E. Butler on February 24 via Symphony Space
Who: Branden Jacobs-Jenkins, N. K. Jemisin, Walter Mosley, Imani Perry, Yetide Badaki, Adepero Oduye
What: Readings and conversations
Where: Symphony Space Virtual Space
When: Wednesday, February 24, $15, 7:00
Why: In honor of the fifteenth anniversary of the passing of award-winning American science-fiction writer Octavia E. Butler, who died on February 24, 2006, at the age of fifty-eight, a stellar group of writers and actors are gathering virtually at Symphony Space for an evening of readings and live discussion. A feminist and, arguably, an Afro-futurist, Butler wrote such works as Kindred, Bloodchild and Other Stories, and the Patternist, Xenogenesis, and Earthseed series. In her 1998 MIT speech “Devil Girl from Mars: Why I Write Science Fiction,” she said, “It’s impossible to begin to talk about myself and the media without going back to how I wound up writing science fiction and that is by watching a terrible movie.The movie was called Devil Girl from Mars, and I saw it when I was about twelve years old, and it changed my life.” There’s no telling how many people’s lives were changed by reading Butler; the evening will feature playwright Branden Jacobs-Jenkins, authors N. K. Jemisin, Walter Mosley, and Imani Perry, and actors Yetide Badaki and Adepero Oduye.