Tuesday, May 26, 2026

Octavia’s Bookshelf Hosts the Author of a New Octavia Butler Biography

[photo credit: Octavia’s Bookshelf]

Susana M. Morris brings “Positive Obsession” home to the Pasadena bookstore named for her subject

There is a particular kind of full-circle moment built into Wednesday’s event at Octavia’s Bookshelf: Susana M. Morris will read from her new biography of Octavia E. Butler at the Pasadena bookstore that opened in 2023 in Butler’s honor, in the city where Butler grew up.

The conversation and reading runs from 6 to 8 p.m. on Wednesday, May 27. Morris’s book, “Positive Obsession: The Life and Times of Octavia E. Butler,” released last year, traces Butler’s path from Pasadena schoolgirl to MacArthur Fellow — the first science fiction writer to win the “genius” award — while situating her work within the Civil Rights Movement, Black Power, women’s liberation and the political turbulence that shaped her speculative fiction.

Morris is an associate professor of literature, media and communication at Georgia Tech and a co-founder of the Crunk Feminist Collective. Her scholarship centers Black women’s stories and experiences, and reviewers of “Positive Obsession” have credited her with situating Butler firmly within the cultural and historical moments that produced “Kindred,” “Parable of the Sower” and the rest of Butler’s now-canonical body of work.

Octavia’s Bookshelf, founded by Nikki High, opened in February 2023 as Pasadena’s only bookstore focused on BIPOC writers. The shop has become a community anchor — particularly so for readers and families displaced by the Eaton Fire — and its programming consistently brings the kind of authors Butler herself would have wanted on its shelves.

Susana M. Morris in Conversation will run on Wednesday, May 27 from 6 p.m. to 8 p.m. Octavia’s Bookshelf, 1361 N. Hill Ave., in Pasadena. For more information call (626) 421-6222 or visit octaviasbookshelf.com.