Positive Obsession: Happy Birthday, Octavia E. Butler

Writers, performers, and scholars celebrate the sci-fi legend on what would have been her 74th birthday.

Featuring:

• Hanif Abdurraqib


• Steven Barnes


• Ayana Jamieson


• Namwali Serpell


• Be Steadwell


• and many more!

Join LIVE from NYPL and a packed lineup of special guests to celebrate Octavia E. Butler on what would have been her 74th birthday. In 2006, writers, performers, editors, and friends gathered at The New York Public Library to honor Butler, whose untimely death at the age of 58 had cut short one of the great careers in American letters. Fifteen years later, as the Library of America releases the first of its Butler collections, LIVE from NYPL pays tribute to her work with an evening of talks, readings, and performances. Featuring readings of fiction and nonfiction collected in the Library of America volume, alongside reflections about her as a friend, as a writer, and as an inspiration, plus a very special musical performance. Full program below.

Program:
Introduction—Michelle D. Commander, Associate Director and Curator of the Lapidus Center of the Historical Analysis of Transatlantic Slavery

Reading—Hanif Abdurraqib, "Positive Obsession"

Reflection—Steven Barnes, author and screenwriter

Reflection—Ayana Jamieson, Founder, Octavia E. Butler Legacy Network

Musical Performance—Be Steadwell

Reflection—Jenny Baum, Supervising Librarian, Jefferson Market, and Siva Ramakrishnan, Associate Director, Young Adult Services, New York Public Library

Reading—Namwali Serpell, from "The Evening and the Morning and the Night" 

Positive Obsession: Happy Birthday, Octavia E. Butler, the Richard B. Salomon Distinguished Lecture, is made possible by an endowment established by family and friends of the late Richard B. Salomon.

This program will be streamed live on the NYPL event page.

ACCESSIBILITY NOTES
A live transcript will be provided. ASL interpretation is available upon request. Please submit your request at least two weeks in advance by emailing accessibility@nypl.org. A pre-filled Gmail template is available by clicking here. Any media will be accompanied by alt text to reference before the program or by audio description.

ABOUT THE SPEAKERS
Hanif Abdurraquib is a writer from the east side of Columbus, Ohio.
 

Steven Barnes is a New York Times bestselling author, screenwriter, and educator who has written more than thirty science fiction, fantasy, and horror novels. The NAACP Image Award winner has also written for The Outer Limits, The New Twilight Zone, Stargate SG-1, Andromeda, and Ben 10: Alien Force. He has been nominated for Hugo, Nebula, and Cable Ace Awards. Barnes has lectured at UCLA, Mensa, Pasadena JPL, taught at Seattle University, hosted the "Hour 25" radio show on KPFK, and has been Kung Fu columnist for Black Belt Magazine. An avid yogi and martial artist with three black belts, Steven is also a pioneer in the human potential movement, creating the groundbreaking "Lifewriting" creativity system, making writers the heroes of their own stories.

Jenny Baum has contributed to the article "Librarian Presence in Virtual Worlds" in the Handbook of Research on Practices and Outcomes in Virtual Worlds and Environments. In her free time, she has been known to watch too much reality television.

Michelle  D. Commander is associate director and curator of the Lapidus Center for the Historical Analysis of Transatlantic Slavery at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture. She is the author of Afro-Atlantic Flight, Avidly Reads Passages, and the editor of Unsung: Unheralded Narratives of American Slavery & Abolition.

Ayana Jamieson is a Depth Psychologist and is a founder of the Octavia E. Butler Legacy Network, a global community founded in 2011, committed to highlighting Octavia Butler's life and work while creating new works inspired by Butler's legacy. The Legacy Network grew out of Ayana's research for her doctoral research on Butler's life. Her dissertation is entitled, 'Certainty of the Flesh': A Biomythographical Reading of Octavia E. Butler's Fictions. She is an organizer, educator, and teaches ethnic studies courses at California State University Polytechnic, Pomona. 

Siva Ramakrishnan is a teacher, library professional, and science fiction enthusiast. Her favorite Butler work is Kindred.


Namwali Serpell is a Zambian writer and a Professor of English at Harvard University. She is the author of Seven Modes of Uncertainty (Harvard, 2014), The Old Drift (Hogarth, 2019), and Stranger Faces (Transit, 2020). 

Be Steadwell is a musician, filmmaker, storyteller from Washington DC. In her live performances, she utilizes looping, vocal layering and beat boxing to compose her songs on stage. Be's original music features earnest lyricism, and affirming LGBTQ content. Be's goal as a musician is to make other black girls, queers, introverts and generally marginalized weirdos feel seen and loved.

GET THE BOOK

• NYPL Catalog


• SimplyE, available on iOS and Android


• The Library Shop — proceeds benefit the New York Public Library

Don't have a New York Public Library card? Get one here!

And be sure to check out the Library Shop's Octavia Butler Collection. 

CONNECT   

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Please submit all press inquiries to Sara Beth Joren at least 48 hours before the event: email sarabethjoren@nypl.org or use this Gmail template.

For all other questions and inquiries, please email publicprograms@nypl.org or use this Gmail template.

LIVE from NYPL is made possible by the support of Library patrons and friends, as well as by the continuing generosity of Celeste Bartos, Mahnaz Ispahani Bartos and Adam Bartos, and the Margaret and Herman Sokol Public Education Endowment Fund.

PUBLIC NOTICE AND DISCLAIMER
This Program uses a third-party website link. By clicking on the third-party website link, you will leave NYPL’s website and enter a website not operated by NYPL. We encourage you to review the privacy policies of every third-party website or service that you visit or use, including those third parties with whom you interact with through our Library services. For more information about these third-party links, please see the section of NYPL's Privacy Policy describing "Third-Party Library Services Providers" at https://www.nypl.org/help/about-nypl/legal-notices/privacy-policy.

During this Program, you will be using third-party platforms such as Zoom and YouTube, for the purpose of communication. This service may collect some personally identifying information about you, such as name, username, email address, & password. This service will treat the information it collects about you pursuant to its own privacy policy, which can be found here: Google Privacy Policy, Zoom Privacy Policy, YouTube Privacy Policy.

Hanif Adurraqib © Kate Sweeney