Octavia E. Butler: The Last Interview: and Other Conversations is a very well curated collection of recollections, interviews, and vignettes by/about/and featuring Octavia Butler. Released 19th Sept 2023 by Melville House, it's 192 pages and is available in paperback and ebook formats.
Octavia Butler was a powerhouse author and a brilliant human being. Her practicality and intelligence shine in these articles and interviews which span decades from her early career (1979 Thrust interview with Jeffrey Elliott) through a 2006 podcast shortly before her death. She is always articulate and well spoken and offers astute insights into human nature, speculative fiction, authors and the craft of creative writing, being a minority voice in an overwhelmingly white (at the time) field, and her lived experiences.
This book is part of a series of Last Interviews with authors, cultural icons, writers, and musicians. The interviews included in this volume are arranged in roughly chronological order and give an interesting overview and some insights into ways her interactions changed over her career, or at least her interactions with interviewers. The introduction by Samuel R. Delany is warmly and respectfully written and adds a lot to the overall book.
This is a short but vitally interesting collection for fans of the author, and would be a good choice for public or school library acquisition (along with the rest of the series), as well as for fans of the author's work and potentially for more formal classroom instruction.
Five stars.
Disclosure: I received an ARC at no cost from the author/publisher for review purposes.
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