Octavia E. Butler (1947–2006) was the renowned author of numerous groundbreaking novels including Kindred, Wild Seed, and Parable of the Sower. Recipient of the Locus, Hugo and Nebula awards, and a PEN Lifetime Achievement Award for her body of work, in 1995 she became the first science-fiction writer to win the MacArthur Fellowship. An Afrofuturist pioneer, her dystopian novels explore myriad themes of Black injustice, women’s rights, global warming, and human survival, and her work is taught in over two hundred colleges and universities nationwide.
Imani Perry is the National Book Award–winning author of South to America, as well as seven other books of nonfiction. She is the Henry A. Morss Jr. and Elisabeth W. Morss Professor of Studies of Women, Gender, and Sexuality and of African and African American Studies at Harvard University, and is a 2023 MacArthur Fellow. Perry lives between Philadelphia and Cambridge with her two sons.
