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9:35 a.m., Nov. 7, 2002--Novelist Octavia Butler, whose honors include a MacArthur Fellowship, Nebula Awards, Hugo Awards and the James Tiptree Jr. Award, discussed her life and work to an audience of more than 100 Wednesday, Nov. 6, in Purnell Hall.
 Speaking to a group that included several aspiring writers, Butler said, “Writers use everything. Unfortunately, what is most useful is what is negative.” Illustrating her point, she said that, before she became established as a professional writer, she held many different and unrewarding jobs. Butler said she “dumped all those awful little jobs” into her fourth novel, “Kindred,” about a modern black woman transported to the antebellum South.
In writing “The Parable of the Sower,” a novel set in the near future about a woman who establishes a new religion, Butler said she thought she knew no one like her main character, and then she thought of her own grandmother. Born in the late 19th century, her grandmother married at 12, had several children, was widowed young and still “over and over again, she made something from nothing,” Butler said.
A self-professed news addict, Butler said her interest in a variety of current topics, such as drugs, illiteracy, the yawning gap between the rich and the poor and global warming, also found their way into that novel.
She concluded her talk by answering questions from the audience.
Butler’s talk at UD was sponsored by the Women’s Studies Program and the Philadelphia Women’s Studies Consortium. She was introduced by Jessica Schiffman, assistant director of women’s studies, and Carol Henderson, associate professor of English.
Photo by Jessie Johnson
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