In this podcast The Outer Dark presents ‘Patternmaster: The Legacy of Octavia Butler’, a panel from Blacktasticon 2018 moderated by Sheree Renée Thomas and featuring Valjeanne Jeffers, Kenesha Williams, Linda D Addison, John Jennings, and Troy L. Wiggins, plus a The Outer Dark Symposium 2019 update. The panel was recorded live at Georgia Tech Student Center in Atlanta, Ga., on Saturday June 16, 2018.
The Outer Dark Symposium on the Greater Weird is a unique immersive one-day event featuring more than 40 program participants and approximately 16 hours of panels, readings, signings and social activities centered around contemporary Weird and speculative fiction. The third annual event will be held March 22-23, 2019 at Silver Scream FX Lab and Hotel Indigo-College Park in Atlanta, GA. Limited to 75 attendees. Buy your memberships here.
Show Notes
First, Scott updates listeners on the latest news about The Outer Dark Symposium 2019 including this year’s Indiegogo campaign set to launch soon. (00:04:00) Then The Outer Dark presents ‘Patternmaster: The Legacy of Octavia Butler’, a panel from Blacktasticon 2018 moderated by Sheree Renée Thomas and featuring Valjeanne Jeffers, Kenesha Williams, Linda D Addison, John Jennings, and Troy L. Wiggins. The panelists introduce themselves and their work, and then discuss and celebrate the life and legacy of this amazing author, including their personal responses to Butler’s work and first experiences encountering her fiction, Butler’s own writing struggles, and how Butler would feel about her deification today. Addison recalls how she met Butler in a kitchen, and Thomas talks about Butler’s ‘generosity of spirit’, and how she met Butler at a New York literary event and asked her for a story for her groundbreaking Dark Matter: A Century of Speculative Fiction from the African Diaspora anthology series. The conversation turns to how Butler’s work and Dark Matter seeded future projects such as the Bram Stoker Award-nominated Sycorax’s Daughters, other black speculative writers such as Samuel R. Delany and Charles R. Saunders, Clarion West and Harlan Ellison as her first champion, her ‘centered balanced focused energy’ in Addison’s words, her fundamental belief in her own work, her essential role as ‘gatekeeper’ for other authors, Jennings’ powerful experience with Damian Duffy adapting the Stoker and Eisner Award-winning Kindred graphic novel, things he learned from Butler’s Kindred files, her personal struggle with writers’ block, her legacy in the hundreds of black women writers in speculative fiction today, progress and work still to be done in their road to recognition and respect, comments from the audience by Dr. Susana Morris (Georgia Tech) on teaching Butler, and much more.
Please subscribe to The Outer Dark podcast RSS Feed
Subscribe via iTunes
Listen to The Outer Dark via iTunes
Subscribe via Blubrry
Listen via Stitcher
Visit our Patreon page and donate to The Outer Dark and the This Is Horror Podcast today.
Additional Links
TOD040 Black Women in Speculative Fiction Panel from BlacktastiCon 2018
UCRiverside: Creating Social Change with Comics – John Jennings (podcast interview)
FIYAH Magazine of Black Speculative Fiction
CNN: Octavia E. Butler: A Visionary Among Futurists (June 22, 2018)
Sleeping Under the Tree of Life by Sheree Renee Thomas
Luminescent Threads: Connections to Octavia E. Butler edited by Alexandra Pierce and Mimi Mondal
Show Credits
Host/Executive Producer: Scott Nicolay
Co-Host, News From the Weird: Justin Steele
Producer/Show Notes: Anya Martin
Logo Design: Nick “The Hat” Gucker
Music: Michael Griffin
Support This Is Horror Podcast on Patreon
- For $1 you get early bird access to all our podcasts and can submit questions to guests.
- For $3 you get access to our patrons-only podcast Story Unboxed: The Horror Podcast on the Craft of Writing.
- For $4 you get the full interview, no two-parters.
The best way to support This Is Horror is via Patreon. How much will you pledge? Go on. Be awesome.
Visit our Patreon page and pledge to the This Is Horror Podcast today.
This Is Horror Books
Head on over to the This Is Horror Shop to see the books we have available. We have a special offer on All Four Year One Books—JUST £10!
This Is Horror Books on Kindle Unlimited and Amazon
- They Don’t Come Home Anymore by T.E. Grau
- A House at the Bottom of a Lake by Josh Malerman
- The Visible Filth by Nathan Ballingrud
- The Elvis Room by Stephen Graham Jones
- Water For Drowning by Ray Cluley
- Chalk by Pat Cadigan
- Roadkill by Joseph D’Lacey
Subscribe, Rate and Review on iTunes!
Help the Podcast, spread the word: subscribe, rate and review on iTunes UK, iTunes US or your country’s iTunes.
Amazon Affiliates
Support us by shopping through our Amazon Affiliate links: Amazon UK and Amazon US.
