On a lark, I am going to travel yet again! (Too many trips, but I really like going to see new places, encounter new ideas, and visit friends.) I just found out about this little two day conference a week or so ago: Futurity as Praxis: Learning from Octavia E Butler at the Huntington Library in Pasadena, CA. The conference coincides with the opening year in Butler’s Parable series:
The year 2024 marks the beginning of the critical dystopian future Octavia E. Butler (1947–2006) envisioned in her groundbreaking novel Parable of the Sower. Her fiction and the story of her life compel us to reckon with power, leadership, creativity, the Earth, human relationships, and the unknown possibilities that await us in the stars. Now, intellectuals from different communities will gather to contemplate her legacy. This conference asks how we have learned from Butler’s writing and what her archive at The Huntington—a short distance from where the author spent her formative years in Pasadena, California—can help future generations discover.
Since I have not been to the Huntington before, since there are people speaking at the conference that I want to hear (and meet), and since I love and work on Butler, I decided that it was worth the trip. Plus, as the Vice President of the Octavia E. Butler Literary Society, I figure someone from the organization should be there.
