Thursday, October 14
6-7:20 pm/PDT
FREE Virtual Event!
Afrosurrealism and Afrofuturism:
Reimagining Our Past and Dreaming Our Future
Join WNBA-SF Chapter for a panel of readings and discussion of speculative literature of the African diaspora.
How does the genre contribute to healing and to hope?
Moderated by Ellen McBarnette
Ellen McBarnette, moderator, writes in the Afrosurrealist and Afrofuturist tradition of Octavia Butler, in which the Black experience is the basis for reimagining the past and dreaming the future. Her novella, Negrita, is coming out in the Midnight and Indigo, Speculative Edition Volume II, in February 2022. She is committed to peer supportive communities of writers as a necessary part of the writer’s experience and is active in the San Francisco literary community. She runs the Afrosurrealist Writers Workshop of Oakland and the Beta Writers and Readers Group in Hayward. She is active in the WNBA-SF chapter and lives in Hayward, California with her partner, Ben and their cat, Java.
Panelists
WNBA-SF Chapter is honored to host the incomparable Sheree Renee Thomas and Bay Area Afrofuturism and Afrosurrealists and others for an evening of readings and discussion about the modern era of speculative literature of the African diaspora. Questions welcome, such as how are the two genres connected and how does speculative fiction contribute to healing and to hope?
Sheree Renée Thomas is an award-winning speculative fiction writer, poet, and editor. She edited the two-time World Fantasy-winning Dark Matter anthologies and has tales in The Future of Black: Afrofuturism, Black Comics, and Superhero Poetry (Blair, November 2021), The Big Book of Modern Fantasy (1945-2010), Marvel’s Black Panther: Tales of Wakanda, Slay, and Year’s Best Dark Fantasy & Horror, Vol. 2. and in the Year’s Best African Speculative Fiction (Djembefola 2021). Thomas was honored as a 2020 World Fantasy Award Finalist for contributions to the genre. She is the editor of The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, founded in 1949 and associate editor of Obsidian, founded in 1975, and a member of Carnegie Hall’s Curatorial Counsel for the special 2022 NYC-citywide Afrofuturism festival. Visit www.shereereneethomas.com or follow her on Twitter @blackpotmojo, IG: @shereereneethomas
A member of the Afrosurrealist Writers Workshop of Oakland, Gabriel Akata is an Afrofuturist Fantasy writer who loves to imagine how the world could be. Born in Brooklyn in ’89, a lifelong lover of books, in the written word Gabriel found a window into the often baffling actions and motivations of others, as well as a way to make himself understood. He began writing stories and journal entries early. A Forum-Based Role Playing Games built on the childhood series, Animorphs was pivotal in his development as an author. Empowered by academics, he writes speculative fiction but also nonfiction in the areas of History, Social Theory, Politics, and Race. Click here for more: Link
Glenn Parris writes sci-fi, fantasy, and medical mystery. Originally from New York City, Glenn Parris is an alumnus of The Bronx High School for Science, Fordham University, and SUNY Buffalo School of Medicine. The Renaissance of Aspirin, his debut novel, which garnered rave reviews, and paranormal fantasy, Unbitten: A Vampire Dream, have been adapted to screenplays. Over the past 30 years, Glenn Parris has taught at Emory School of Medicine and Morehouse School of Medicine, and Philadelphia School of Osteopathic Medicine. He is also Medical Director of a large rheumatology practice in the northeast Atlanta suburbs. You can find out more about Glenn Parris at www.glennparris.com.
Audrey T. Williams is the former organizer of the Afrosurrealist Writers Workshop of Oakland, and a leader in the speculative fiction writing community of the Bay. She earned her MFA from California College of the Arts in San Francisco. Her poetry can be found in Space & Time Magazine, FUNGI, and is forthcoming in Conjuring Worlds, the first-ever Afrofuturist homeschool textbook for middle grades. Audrey is a nonfiction contributor to Lightspeed Magazine and is Founder of the nonprofit Ancestral Futures, where she co-facilitates a mentorship for BIPOC speculative writers that matches them with professional authors in their genre of choice. AncestralFutures.org
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