Jaye Austin Williams, PhD and Skidmore College alumna

For me, reading Black Science Fiction is a heuristic (a facilitator of one’s continued exploration) for considering terror’s indelible impact upon the complicated, paradoxical process of “living” while black. The intergenerational imprint of racial slavery continues to prompt a multifarity of thought – speculative and otherwise – around how to reckon with this paradox. From Samuel Delany, to Walter Mosley, to Octavia Butler, to the many contemporary Black voices writing within the genre who are not named here, the invitation to speculate about future, its im/possibilities, and to examine the implications of having to pursue such study to begin with, is precisely what compels me to think and imagine alongside these writers. I look forward to elaborating some of that thought, and who several of the Black Science Fiction writers are with whom I engage.

SESSION INFO:
Saturday, October 5, 2:00pm at Saratoga Springs Public Library, Dutcher Community Room: Black Into the Future: Science Fiction & Fantasy by Black Authors with Jaye Austin Williams & Shawntelle Madison