I've been pulled into several projects this year which have taken up so much time that I have been negligent about updating this blog.

Apologies.

To catch up quickly, one of the on-going projects is a year-long celebration of science fiction writer Octavia E. Butler and her legacy. In the spring we did a group reading inspired by documents and ephemera found in Butler's archive at the Huntington Library. My piece was a "posthumous interview" with the writer, which was pieced together from journals, notes from her fictions, letters and commonplace books. She was constantly speaking to herself on these pages and that's what I wanted to convey in my piece.

Yesterday would have been her 69th birthday. She was gone far too soon, but in the last few months I've been thinking a great deal about what she's left us and all the places we wouldn't have been able to go if not for both her example and her persistence.

Thank you, Octavia.