National Black Writers Conference symposium on Octavia Butler

The National Black Writers Conference Bi-Annual Symposium celebrates the life and work of renowned speculative fiction author Octavia E. Butler in a daylong symposium to be held on Saturday, March 28, 2009 from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. at Medgar Evers College, 1650 Bedford Ave., Brooklyn, NY 11225.

“Octavia Butler was the first black woman to come to international prominence as a science fiction writer and she has influenced a generation of authors as well as a diverse general public who still eagerly look for her work,” said Dr. Brenda Greene, Conference Coordinator and Executive Director of the Center for Black Literature. “Our celebration of her work and life is a testament to her impact on literature and a fulfillment of our mission to expanding the literary canon.”

“Bayou;” fantasy/horror comic by Jeremy Love and Patrick Morgan

South of the Mason-Dixon lurks a strange world of gods and monsters born of years of slavery, civil war, innocent blood, hate and strife. The daughter of a poor black sharecropper, Lee Wagstaff, joins a blues-singing swamp monster name Bayou on a southern odyssey through a mythic combination of depression era Mississippi, African mythology and American folklore in order to rescue her childhood friend and save her father’s life.

Bayou is by Jeremy Love and Patrick Morgan.