$8.01 ebook to raise Butler scholarship funds

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Bloodchildren, Carl Brandon Society, Nisi Shawl, Octavia E. Butler, Octavia E. Butler Scholarship

I’ve written before about how amazing a writer Octavia E. Butler was. Her stories themselves are amazing, and she was too – simplistically put, she was a woman of color writing at a time when the field of science fiction was dominated by white men.

Diversity is essential to art and to culture and to humanity. So, help the Carl Brandon Society raise funds for this scholarship administered in the name of a great speculative writer. Then you can download an ebook anthology of science fiction and fantasy stories written by students who have attended a Clarion workshop through the support of the scholarship. Reap the rewards of diversity and good writing.

I’ve downloaded mine!

Read below the information from Book View Cafe’s website (then go to their site and order! It’s fast and simple – even I had no difficulties):

Stories by the Octavia E. Butler Scholars
edited by Nisi Shawl
$8.01 (Anthology) ISBN 978-1-61138-237-2

Donate $8.01 to the Octavia E. Butler Scholarship Fund. Reap the reward right now.

Every year, the Carl Brandon Society, whose goal is to increase diversity in the field of science fiction, presents scholarships to two students of color accepted to the prestigious Clarion and Clarion West writers’ workshops. The scholarships, named in honor of the brilliant African-American writer Octavia Butler, pay workshop tuition and housing fees for the recipients. Since 2007, they have made it possible for eleven students to attend the workshops.

Give a little, get a free ebook.

If you contribute a mere $8.01 to the scholarship fund, you can download Bloodchildren: Stories by the Octavia E. Butler Scholars, an ebook anthology of science fiction and fantasy stories by these students — the voices of the new generation of writers of color in speculative fiction.

Edited by Nisi Shawl, Bloodchildren includes an introduction by Nalo Hopkinson and a memoir by Vonda N. McIntyre of her friendship with Octavia Butler, which began when they were students together at the Clarion Workshop in 1970.

The collection includes ground-breaking stories by Indrapramit Das, Shweta Narayan, Caren Gussoff, Rochita Loenen-Ruiz, Lisa Bolekaja, Chris Caldwell, Jeremy Sim, Erik Owomoyela, Dennis Y. Ginoza, Mary Burroughs, and Kai Ashante Wilson.

Donate now!

This special ebook is available only until June 22, 2013, Octavia’s birthday. She would have been sixty-six this year.

Octavia taught at Clarion and Clarion West, and provided enormous support there — and elsewhere — to other writers of color. Through these scholarships, she continues to do so.

Help continue Octavia’s work.

Please support the scholarship program right now with a modest $8.01 donation, and then download your gift: this original anthology celebrating an international coterie of writers who are truly the children and inheritors of Octavia Butler.

Contents of Bloodchildren: Stories by the Octavia E. Butler Scholars, edited by Nisi Shawl

Introduction by Nalo Hopkinson

Before Conception
“Speech Sounds” by Octavia E. Butler
“Octavia Estelle Butler” by Vonda N. McIntyre

2007
“My Love Will Never Die” by Christopher Caldwell
“Falling into the Earth” by Shweta Narayan

2008
“Free Bird” by Caren Gussoff
“Impulse” by Mary Burroughs

2009
“Dancing in the Shadow of the Once” by Rochita Loenen-Ruiz

2010
“Légendaire.” by Kai Ashante Wilson
“Steal the Sky” by Erik Owomoyela

2011
“/sit” by Jeremy Sim
“Re: Christmas, Bainbridge Island” by Dennis Y. Ginoza

2012
“The Runner of n-Vamana” by Indrapramit Das
“The Salt Water African” by Lisa Bolekaja

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New Books! – and more on Octavia Butler

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A Room Of One's Own Bookstore, Margo Lanagan, Octavia E. Butler, Shaun Tan

Ooh, the lovely dangers of bookstores. I stopped into a Room of One’s Own in downtown Madison – in new digs! -(operating since 1975, with a “strong children’s and young adult, women’s studies and LGBT fiction and nonfiction sections” as described on their website) and picked up a couple new books. Yes, I seriously restrained myself and bought only two books, and stationary. But nothing else. This time.

Tender Morsels by Margo Lanagan “is a dark and vivid story, set in two worlds and worrying at the border between them. Liga lives modestly in her own personal heaven, a world given to her in exchange for her earthly life. Her two daughters grow up in this soft place, protected from the violence that once harmed their mother. But the real world cannot be denied forever—magicked men and wild bears break down the borders of Liga’s refuge. Now, having known Heaven, how will these three women survive in a world where beauty and brutality lie side by side?” (description from Room’s website).

Lost and Found by Shaun Tan is “a collection of three jaw-dropping stories: THE RED TREE, THE LOST THING, and THE RABBITS, by New York Times bestselling author and illustrator Shaun Tan.
A girl finds a bright spot in a dark world. A boy leads a strange, lost creature home. And a group of peaceful creatures loses their home to cruel invaders. Three stories, written and illustrated by Shaun Tan, about how we lose and find what matters most to us.” (description from Room’s website).

And look at these other great titles and drawings by Tan:

And I finished Parable of the Sower last night (this morning, technically). I stayed up late, way past by bed time to finish. It’s Octavia Butler, what can I say? It was great: conceptually brilliant, well-written, engaging, characters of color and mixed race characters and couples all in a socially and politically relevant setting. (How could I have forgot to mention strong female characters in my first draft? They’re there too. And I don’t just mean “strong” as in physically strong or capable to do what the character wants to do – though Lauren Olamina (MC) is certainly physically capable – I also mean emotionally and mentally strong. Strong-willed. Mature. Responsible. Intelligent. Creative. Lauren is all these things. Female characters have agency in Butler’s novel.) This is spec fic at its finest. She was a master.

From BHP – Black History Pages – website : Every story I write adds to me a little, changes me a little, forces me to reexamine an attitude or belief, causes me to research and learn, helps me to understand people and grow…Every story I create, creates me. I write to create myself.  —Octavia E. Butler

(check out the great links at the bottom of the BHP page about Ms. Butler: Nalo Hopkinsons’ essay: Dark Ink about writers of color writing speculative fiction, interview with Ms. Butler at Locus Magazine about persistence, and more!)
I thank all that is good that our world was graced with Ms. Butler and is still being bettered by her through her writing. She inspires me, her writing and her history challenge me to be strong, to be true to myself, to reexamine my own attitudes and beliefs. That is what inspirational people do – challenge you to be yourself. Maybe one of the hardest things to do in a culture like ours. Maybe one of the more necessary.

(Note: edited on October 10, 2012, with new content.)

Octavia E. Butler’s “Parable of the Sower”

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Octavia E. Butler, story telling, writing

My life is all things house and remodeling on small budget of near zero (but it’s mine and I get to create a comfortable and enchanted and cozy home). I’ve written next to nothing (bad, I know). Yes. Bad. But I’ve been squeezing in some reading.

So, I want to keep you abreast of my reading: Octavia E. Butler’s Parable of the Sower. Wow. I mean, I knew it would be wow, it’s Ms. Butler and she was simply an amazing, genius, courageous writer. And I have yet to read something of hers that has not really impressed itself upon my mind. Not yet read anything of hers that wasn’t fluid to read.

Which has me thinking of why I didn’t like Charles de Lint more, despite the themes that so intrigued me. Because Butler has themes, oh my, does she ever. Great themes, human themes. Jilly, the main character in The Onion Girl, has things happen to her. Interesting things, horrible things, wonderous things. And as I wrote that last sentence I realized that, yes, the passive tense is appropriate because she really didn’t seem to have too much invested. I mean she did, she was an artist and art was her life and there was a very good chance she would be unable to recover enough to paint again. That’s tragic. But I never felt her life was tragic. I never felt her teetering on the edge of the abyss. I felt intrigued by the Dream Lands, but I didn’t feel her intrigue. My interest was my own.

And Jilly’s lack of negative emotion, that’s just not human. One reviewer wrote that it made her seem so goody-goody. I think it made her seem so blah, and just not real, not really there.

But Lauren, main character of Parable… life is tough, and she knows it will only get worse – a curse in and of itself that, knowledge. And she suffers (suffer, is gifted with, depends on how you look at it, but in a society that’s in the most major of declines and humanity is losing its grip on the humane, it feels like it may be more curse than gift) she suffers from hyper-empathy. And her younger brother (half-brother, as is made to be important) may be a sociopath and he’s stolen his mother’s Smith&Wesson and has left their barely clinging to safety and life gated community. Shit’s going to get worse really quickly and Lauren knows it.

And I feel all of it with her. I know her fear and her outrage at society’s actions, politicians and business people hoarding power and wealth when so, so many are hurting and without the basic dignity of life (and I mean know as in understand and comprehend and can integrate this information on a personal level). And I know that she hates her brother as much as she loves him, hates how his actions have torn the family apart. She sees his complete denial and lack of comprehension for the horrific and disturbing actions he’s taken. Her little brother. The selfish, despicable, actions of those in power that perpetuate the miserable conditions she and her brother experience every day. I feel this conflict.

Lauren is intelligent and strong. We need more characters like her. We need more people like this. I’m impressed by how real she is to me.

Her family and the small community they live in can barely afford the water they need to survive. They can’t really afford to pay the police for their services. Lauren wants to get ready for when it all falls apart: their walls that barely keep thieves and rapists and worse out, the American political system which is stumbling after an already collapsed economy, their own humanity which is being quashed on most sides from the hungry, drugged-out, under-educated, under-employed, hopeless, homeless masses. But no one wants to talk about preparing for the future, they want to hide in their denial. Lauren thinks they are hypocrites, fearful. Then, when thinking about her father and his mortality, she admits that she’s no different – she doesn’t truly understand what that would be like, to lose her father, that she doesn’t feel his mortality as a real inevitability. And I feel this ambivalence, this ambiguity with her.

These are some of the differences I’m seeing between de Lint’s novel and Butler’s. And I’m only a third of the way through Parable of the Sower. Of course, I was excited for de Lint’s story from the beginning, but by the time I was a third of the way through his I’d already been wrenched out of his story-telling and thought do I really need to read this again? I have only been swept away by Butler’s story-telling. And while I have seen myself in Lauren, I still am surprised by and feel engaged in her thoughts and her actions. I don’t know where I want this story to go. With de Lint’s story, I did have a much better idea of how I expected the story to develop, and it didn’t go there. Interesting difference, to be so engaged and yet not have an agenda – I’m along for the ride in Butler’s story. I’ll let her take me where she wants, I will follow where she leads.