Journalist
Essayist
I'm a journalist and essayist based in Los Angeles, telling the city's story one sentence at a time. My latest book "A Handful of Earth, A Handful of Sky: The World of Octavia E. Butler"— a Hugo Award finalist — traces the California-born writer's early formation, through an assemblage of objects drawn from her personal archive. My 2018 book, After/Image: Los Angeles Outside the Frame, is a collection of essays and photographs exploring Los Angeles' ever-shifting terrain.
Latest Article
The Visions of Octavia Butler
From The New York Times
Since her death at 58 in 2006, after a fall outside her home in Lake Forest Park, Wash., her novels have inspired art installations, librettos and jazz suites. They now appear on university syllabuses and high school reading lists. Her extensive archives, housed primarily at the Huntington Library in San Marino, Calif., contain her voluminous notebooks and meticulous research. She led the way for the next generation of Black readers, thinkers and builders to picture themselves in the collective future, laying the groundwork for an Afrofuturist movement before the term even existed. . . . .
This year marks the 75th anniversary of Butler’s birth. Her themes, ideas and characters continue to resonate with new readers at a time when so many are looking for, if not hope, then a map for a way forward.
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