January 3, 2023, 12:31pm
Here’s a piece of good literary news to start the year: a new independent bookstore named after the legendary Octavia E. Butler is opening in Pasadena, California, where the late Sci-Fi icon was born and raised.
I took the leap and quit my job to open my very own bookstore. Octavia’s Bookshelf will open in February and features books written by BIPOC authors in Pasadena, Ca https://t.co/yJeGAZJKNq pic.twitter.com/YZbONk0fXp
— Auntie Nikki is a Virgo💛 🐝 (@gofetchgretch) December 31, 2022
As reported in LAist earlier today,
Owner Nikki High said she hopes to highlight authors who are Black, Indigenous, and other people of color.
High chose the name as a tribute to Pasadena native, science-fiction author and MacArthur fellow Octavia Butler who died in 2006. Butler was one of the first to feature people of color in sci-fi novels.
High has received some funding support for the bookstore through GoFundMe where updates on the store’s progress have been posted. She decided to open the bookstore after her grandmother died last May.
“I also like to think that we all have an Octavia in our lives—someone who is before their time, a wordsmith. And I just thought it was a neat way to honor all of the Octavias in our life,” High said.
Butler, who died of a stroke in 2006 at the age of 58, was a Guggenheim fellow and recipient of multiple Hugo and Nebula awards. In 2010 she was inducted into the Science Fiction Hall of Fame and in 2021 NASA named the landing site of the Perseverance rover in Jezero crater on Mars the “Octavia E. Butler Landing” in her honor.
Check out Lit Hub’s Octavia Butler archive here