 So I guess I'm gonna start with some of the you know, some of the the kind of one more questions like for instance Like what inspired you to want to write the with the things that you do or Who are some of the people that you looked up to and and and what types of stories inspire you? You know let's start off with just as a writer. Hmm or as a consumer of fiction or narratives of any kind, so You want me to take it you can go out to start. I can't help remembering. This is our January 15th Martin Luther King day when my mother used to let us stay home from school before there was a holiday my sisters and I could stay home from school and Their activist friends black and white would come to the house and they play old speeches and records So that my parents were really the first storytellers in my life those oral narratives about what they did what their friends did Just to make sure that would not be forgotten So those kinds of stories really spoke to me the diary ban Frank and roots by Alex Haley So I play I did little baby stories from the age of four But I started to really write when I wrote my little rip off of roots called Lawni Lawni Make us free a girl undergoing the Middle Passage, you know, I was really drawn to try to To explain the inexplicable how do people survive and even the horror I write is about that How do you survive? against just this Insurmountable thing whether it's a demon or a zombie or a curse or whatever it is That's great. I So I started writing half-rocentric It was a response really to when I was teaching right over here actually at SF City College and Laney College in Oakland. I Was teaching a class on the prison industrial complex and the only book that seemed to Make it into my students mind or at home or whatever was the real cost of prison's comic book I don't know how many people have heard of that book, but it came out around 2007 2008 and It's a comic book that explains the prison industrial complex in great detail But also it really lays lays down some some complex ideas just through through illustrations and a little bit of writing So I was I was heavily inspired by that and I started to write my own comic book I intended it originally to be a curriculum for my students But it ended up being you know me kind of musing on the relationship between my brother and I and and How I you know became kind of like this black radical feminists growing up in the white suburbs You know so I loosely base a lot of the characters on myself my brother and it's also an amalgamation of people that I know Yeah, and then I was also really inspired by Aaron McGruder's the boondocks I Yeah, big ups to the boondocks You know it was the first time that I saw that you could introduce humor and also humor and wit but also talk about real-life things and so That was a big inspiration for me with half-rocentric and I took a lot of cues from that comic book You know I would I would um, I would I would even state that that notion of signification of humor and various types of You know storytelling and as we know story The idea of a story is also kind of a lie to a certain degree You know that you know like you tell them the story, you know that kind of thing I always love that idea that you're using the story or The signification of something to really get at a deeper meaning or a deeper truth, you know and quite recently I've been really fascinated by a lot of what Bruce Stirling calls a Diagetic prototype so this notion of anybody know Bruce Stirling's work. He's a science science fiction writer He was one of the godfather is one of the godfathers of cyberpunk and but he's also a design theorist too and so this notion of like the diagetic prototype the idea of Taking a story the kernel of a story and making something that directly deals or signifies about something that is A social issue or something that you're dealing with in the quote-unquote real world, right? So One of the things when I was tasked with moderating this discussion thinking about the connections. I was looking for the connections between The panelists so one of the things of course is the fact that it seems to me, you know Looking at the work that politics or certain types of politics drive the work, right? or it's a it's an underlying theme to it to a certain degree and Do you think as as as as creators or That there's possible to not do something this political or is it something that's Like, you know, I mean is it possible for you to make something in that fashion because I know what my answer is You know, but I'm like, you know because I it's okay to talk about the intersection between your politics and the stories that you make but also Do you do you do you make things that are just? For the sake of making, you know that kind of thing. What do you have? That's a tough question. I know right why The way I look at it if I'm writing a character of color, that's political Yes, even now, right? So it could be a story about a girl looking at a rainbow You know, but still yeah, what colors would she see? I am Writing historical fiction is so political. I'm sorry because it's this our society has worked so hard to erase us You know even seeing ourselves and like fences. How often do you get to see that era in film? You know, so I'm a hidden fences. I'm sorry Boy, you bad to have me thinking I said that I'm still angry. I'm still dealing with that a little bit I'm sorry Let me start it. So there's that you know I used to erase myself in my work as a young writer from I don't know what happened after Lottie Lottie make us free But the more I was exposed to the cannon the more I vanished in my work. So by the time I was in college I was writing white characters, you know for no reason no reason Just mimicking So yeah, I had a little work to do mm-hmm So yeah, there was a political journey just to discover myself in my own work and to be okay writing about horror Are the supernatural, you know rather than you know as as people said to Octavia Butler Why aren't you writing about the revolution not realizing she was writing about the revolution in her way, right her way And that was my way So Sometimes it's more overt like that. I'm writing a novel now that is very much about Incarceration it's set at a juvenile prison basically. It's a historical mm-hmm based on a real-life family event Hoping to use that to illustrate this wider problem that we have in our society right now And then other times it's metaphorical like my living blood series by the last novel no blood colony the third one We had lost Octavia then and my question was what might Octavia right now under this Bush administration Which you know that was my question to myself my secret prompt right and I dedicated the book to her And it was about the war on drugs and how if there were a magic blood that could heal any ailment would it be legal? No Why would it not be legal because of big pharma, you know And this is where we are right now And I used the term the New Jim Crow in that novel one of the characters father warning him not to get arrested So in this blood so that was my way of trying to be more overtly political But I think everything we do almost is political as artists With the consciousness I have right now there is no way I could do anything that is not political I just like I already already took the pills. So it's like I Can't go back now and be like I just want to make something fun like I feel like at this point I feel somewhat a responsibility, but also I feel a responsibility to you know to kind of tell the truth whatever whatever that truth is for me and You know again, like I said, I I started with the intention of wanting my comic book to be a curriculum So when I first started to write it it was it was Dense it was didactic. It was like, you know, I was using the characters to really speak to Different kind of political ideologies Over time I've switched that up a little bit to try to make them more nuanced, but when I first started writing it was like You know, I wanted to have the character in there that was the black radical I wanted the character in there that kind of represented Chicano nationalism and there's still it's still there to a large degree But now it's one of the things that I've learned with with writing is You know even like for me, I was trying to write these characters and I was like, okay This is like what this kind of person would would think about But one of the things that you end up having to do when you write is like you need to humanize each character Even if you don't like them even if you don't like Their politics or even if you don't like what they're doing, it's really important to to humanize them Otherwise people will kind of see right through that And know that you're not being being true, right? so You know for me the first three volumes of half-rose entry have been about gentrification for one because I'm from the Bay Area and it's It's the thing that's happening Around me and I was trying to name it and even gentrification didn't seem to fully Encompass all the things that were that was happening so So yeah, I used the things that were happening around me to to kind of move the story So it's a saga of how You know these college students try to stop gentrification, but because they're college students. They're also kind of They're part of that problem, right? So So yeah, I mean and I try to make it I try to make it humorous So they they start the first Anti-gentrification social networking site in the world called my diaspora calm And it's basically supposed to be this home where people can stop gentrification on the on the web, right? because you know, I was thinking about like the the the kind of Millennial sensibilities that we have around social justice now are very much tied to technology So I wanted to put that in there and kind of joke with that a little bit But yeah, I mean I look at the things around me and I feel like now, especially as as writers and artists we We really have a responsibility almost to to just kind of You know not shy away from the things that are happening right now Speaking of not shying away from things, right? It's it's hard not to notice that you're both black women, right? Like you are And so It's it's always very difficult. I think I mean in this It's a hyperpatriarchal space, right? I'll all of all of industry Decreative fields is still dominated greatly. I think by a very hyperpatriarchal attitude narrative What have you but then when you map the notion of race? On top of that you also you have this you double down on the different types of Struggles that you have to deal with right, so could you speak I mean? It was I see there are a lot of women of color in the audience And I'm sure that it would like to know some of the different. Yep Was that Yes, so I'm sure that they would like to know a little bit about none of so your struggle but different types of Ways that you've circumvented Some of those attitudes or are still using utilizing ways or technologies even to circumvent those types of things and what what types of Methods have you have you think of employed besides just like working very hard, you know, but yeah, just You know as a novelist I was so blessed to come at a time where Being a woman I think was an empowering thing as a writer as a black woman writer Coming right after Terry Macmillan's waiting to exhale when publishing was like, oh black people read Right, so my book was nothing like waiting to exhale, but it was a black Commercially like a page turner, so they're like, well, let me see if it'll stick I mean that there were a lot of people getting contracts and hardcover paperback tours all those book club meetings 99.9% women I Remember being in Seattle with my husband Steven Barnes and Charles Johnson and a go on girl book club event And we they were looking at the sea of black women going man, we don't have this So so that I don't know now For writers trying to break in the industry has changed, you know those contracts have dried up the sisterhood is still there I know the book clubs are still there, but that bubble burst a little bit and there probably is more Individualism and scrabbling where I have more of an issue is in Hollywood I've been trying to transition to the screenwriting and that is a very Non-inclusive space, you know I was just telling a friend of mine the story about how I drove all the way to comic con and Fought all that traffic to go to a meeting my manager invited me to and it was just a sea of you know Just very short haired white males much younger than I was and I there was no Entree, you know to to a lot of conversation I felt very much the outsider I Do better when women? Gather in their own spaces and there are enough black women in Hollywood right now where they can do that They can have a party, you know, they can invite directors producers Casting directors you name it and and all of you just Send the room and talk and that's a much easier space for me And luckily times are changing enough that I don't have to go to that comic-con party You know I could I can skip that party right and go to just the party where people know where care who I am or know We're care are the stories that I would like to tell Yeah You know I okay, so part of me has been really inspired by Yes, the Black Panther getting rocks and gay to do the writing and things like that but I've also been really inspired by Just seeing the trajectory of somebody like Issa Rae Right and seeing that trajectory of going from throwing a video up on YouTube a web series to that catching You know a lot of momentum and and you know doing a Kickstarter and things like that I think that also I just I don't know. I'm gonna just mention this. I throw this out there I just watched chewing gum on Netflix I Mean it's so wild like and part of me is like, oh my god I can't believe they let a dark-skinned black woman write and produce this entire TV thing I mean it's just like it's so crazy to me that you know even growing up like in the 80s and 90s I'm just like I don't ever remember anything like that right where she could be overtly sexual and so I'm I'm I'm very happy that there are avenues that people can kind of find their their way in and a lot of times Really and truly it comes from the support of black folks really and truly right of pushing These stories and these narratives and saying like yo we want this like we're watching these we're watching these shows We're interested in what these folks are doing so For me it's been it's been great to have a couple of different models. I'll be it not necessarily like in comics, right? But it's been great to have these models and and the other thing that I always think about is Like you know no one in at Marvel is gonna write a story like half a century You know, which to me is an advantage, right? Because you don't have the mindset and you don't have the consciousness to write this story You know, it just it just means that there's that many more stories that need to be told that come from people like me and That look like me so wonderful. Yes. Thank you. Thank you seriously for half a century So I'm Before I open it up to the audience because I don't want to chew up everything I'm very process-oriented. So could you could just and how many writers in the audience who write raise them up Yeah, yeah, don't be a shame Could you speak a little bit about? Plotting writing the craft a little bit about how you start a story And finish it and you know just just the writing process a little bit It's changed for me a lot Because I started out fresh and energetic and writing in my spare time as a newspaper reporter just with this fever Energy level, you know, which as I'm getting older Same feverish energy level. So my process has adapted and here are the most important things especially for busy people I'm assuming none of y'all are full-time writers So when you're not a full-time writer One of the most difficult things is quote finding the time to write though If you think about how much TV you're right watching you probably do have enough time to write It's a matter of making the time making the time to write I knew a reporter whose husband passed away suddenly at the age of 35 when she had just had their fifth Child and that was when she decided to write her novel. She needed to write it there And she found a way to make it happen. Okay, so but I'm teaching now. I'm doing screenwriting There's a lot competing with my prose right now And often it's at the bottom of the stack because it doesn't have a deadline attached to it so one of the tricks to Keeping a project alive because they can die you've probably had some die it happens It happens even when you're published. They you just never finish a story you never finish that novel It happens so write a sentence a day if you can't do anything else We have this idea that we need a two-hour block Oh, those are great But if you don't have a two-hour block and a closed door and complete silence Try to find those little cracks in your day just those little cracks So I can work for 30 minutes 15 minutes even even if you just read over The last good paragraph you wrote and try to improve upon one of the sentences in that paragraph Just a sentence a day and if you give yourself permission to let a successful writing day Look a little different than you used to think a successful writing day was you stop beating yourself up Because we spent half our time criticizing ourselves for what we're not doing Let's celebrate what we are doing and how much else we're doing in addition to that and it will get done as long as you keep working on it That is so true You're like one of the nicest horror writers That's such a good point about Allowing yourself to the space to write and and not Criticize your writing so like when you write and then you erase and then you write and you raise you're just like Ah now that's not good enough. I mean My my process has changed too and again, I was coming kind of from academia. So it's the voice changed completely and To be real y'all like I didn't know what I was doing when I first wrote the comic book and you'll see it You'll see a transition. You'll see the voice change But writing a comic book and writing a now I'm writing a comic strip a Weekly comic strip those are two different writing processes. So When it comes to writing the comic strip oftentimes what I find myself doing is I'll get I'll get an idea or like I'll have a conversation and I'll get an idea and I'll write it in my phone And then I'll come back to it. I do a lot of writing on my phone Especially when it comes to like the subject matter with the comic strips because I can write real quickly like you know like Oakland turns to oak heights or whatever I have this thing about gentrification and it changing right And the name is changing. So I'll just write that down, you know And so when I come back to it then it allows me like, okay, this is what I was going for This is what I was thinking in that moment for for the comic strips because they're so punchy You know, it's only a few lines. So it's easier to come back and get that but with the with the comic books You know, I riff off of certain ideas and I'm not I I didn't like I've read about other people's processes, but this is this is just mine You know, I riff off of ideas or things that happen to me. So like with volume four. I wrote The story is is the main character. She she ends up Getting an internship as a racial translator. So she translates black people to white people and white people to black people and the joke kind of is that her boss is like, oh, well, yeah, you can do this because you're mixed and Her whole thing is like well any black person can do this because you know, we know white people better than they know themselves, right? so I Started writing that because of a conversation I had with a friend where he we for some reason I was I was at His bakery and I was like, you know, I can't hear you and he's like, you know, do we need a translator? I was like, oh my god a race like what if there was a racial translator, you know To like pick up on all the nuances of communication and so I rift off of that idea and I thought it would be You know humorous enough, but also like, you know, I could still talk about all of the things all the things so So yeah, that's how volume four got started and I just I just took that little idea Like what if Naima Pepper was it was a racial translator and that's like what set off the story So One thing I'll add just to process in addition to the sentence a day if you're struggling with a project, especially completion Well, first of all start small maybe before your trilogy write a short story or two But then also outlining that's something I've learned from screenwriting because you do not proceed without an outline and screenwriting for a Lot of reasons and I find it tremendously helpful and I lean on them now They're not written in stone your characters can throw it all away. Maybe but See it through at least have a vision for how it will end and that will help it end. Oh I have one more because you just made me think of something One of the things that helped me actually write the second Volume was when I had to go back to volume one and figure out how to market it right because People were like, okay. Well, you need something together like a character bio. You need to tell us what What are these characters about? Like real talk. I hadn't thought about it deeply. So I was like, okay Like what are they motivated by you know? And this was like these are probably all the things you should have done before you started to write But this was just my process because I was like, I'm just gonna do this comic book and see what happens but Going back and actually marketing them helped me a great deal to figure out like what the next steps were for the for the next stories So think about it like how are you going to how are you going to pitch the story that you have to other people? Like what is your book about? Yeah, you know What who are these characters? What is this world? Is this world mirroring this world right here or is it like this world? But there's a couple things that are different Are the are the characters telling the truth about the world or or not? So these were all things that I had to think about that I ended up thinking about after I wrote the first volume. So yeah, oh Thank you so much Before I open it up to the audience, I do want to take the time out. Are you guys have seen these images? Right. So these images are by a young black woman from New York. Her name is Julie Anderson She's amazing. All right, and it's we're recording. Sorry. We love you Julie. Thank you so much For doing these images. She's amazing. Look her up, but I just want to give a round of applause because she killed it These are beautiful images So question We have time for what? Three three questions. Is that Yeah, Obi. Sorry. Oh, I couldn't see Hello, my name is Obi co-creator red origins been following this Black sci-fi process since 2012 and my main question and it has to do with a little bit with Worldbuilding because there seems to be a lack of wall building But what happened to the word Afrofuturism? I it's not talked about as much anymore a lot of people here are new and they're having really heard about it That's what was what was people were talking about from 2012 up So it seems like Afrofuturism is not as well talked about so I would like to hear more of your discussion on that And what that means versus other stuff funny you mentioned that I Am teaching for the third quarter now at UCLA a course called Afrofuturism and a lot of my students who sign up for it They won't have no idea what it is either, you know The short answer would be for those of you who aren't familiar with the term I call it Afrofuturism also Afro fantasy, you know, which is hand-in-hand with that is where we insert ourselves in the future or in magical realms a lot of it sometimes is utopianism escapism some of it can be dystopia like Octavia Butler's parable series to show us, you know, what's right around the corner or right in front of our door Are in the house But it's it's between Literature film art comics music. No, they weren't only collaboration one of my students were like What was Miles Davis talking to Octavia? No, they were not in conversation except creatively Because this was an art rising to its times, you know when Sun Ra says space is a place That's because this is no longer the place, right? This is no longer. This is not a comfortable space. So But you know what's interesting about it is it's a term and a lot of the early Practitioners of so-called Afrofuturism would not have considered themselves They didn't know I mean it was just coined in 1993 and it's used probably mostly in academic circles I would say I mean I I've heard from teachers of Afrofuturism in Germany and I mean all over the world. So it's a growing Academic sort of language, but I don't know that it's it's permanent and I like it I mean as someone who doesn't write as much futurism. I like Afro fantasy too, but don't leave out the horror, but um, I Think we represent Afrofuturism right here. So it's it's the creation of the work It's teaching each other how to create the work and presenting a future that all of us You know can either march toward or away from together as we create those images Just to kind of piggyback off of it I think as Sonata we've said that the term Generates from like the technical culture from the nineteen for 1990s right, but the term is actually created by white scholar named Mark Derry, and I think that of Recent years I think a lot of people have started to assign that to a kind of Columbus sing to a certain degree You know and so there's been a I think kind of a reaction to it creating different spaces by people of color So renaming it or rethinking it. There's been other pieces like astro blackness the ethnogothic You know that's no surreal the Afro surreal different types of of cornage is it actually are being generated by people of color I think that's some of it of course There is a really great seminal piece by Yatash Womack that's called Afrofuturism that actually starts to encompass all of those pieces and I'm not sure I actually just submitted a syllabus to UCR for intro to Afrofuturism and visual culture class So I think those discussions are still so happening But Black speckled of arts, you know, I think like what a black speckled of arts movement is something I think it's actually a little bit more encompassing But that's not to say that Afrofuturism is dead or it's like it's not being talked about I think I think it still is I think that we're just coming up with different Variations and and maybe like mutations of it now What do we need to do to help your grills and your storytellers and our scholars and what do we need to fund and protect and Build to help you put out our culture to heal the toxicity in all the country cultures of this world Because that's all I need to know So what what can we do to It was a lot I'm trying to I'm trying to summarize, you know So what what can you all do to help support the writers What do we make sure the culture and the things that wealth creates create something non-toxic That we pass on not just to our children, but our people in the communities because you know, these other things are gonna get dealt with Trust me. I'm my family still owns a land of plantations only military since the Civil War. It's gonna get dealt with so, you know This is a great event in terms of an example of what all of us can do in supporting the artists young artists new artists If you like I came into comics through like the mainstream, you know and Marvel and that kind of thing But digging deeper than that and finding the creators number one if you're a producer with money And I think really one of the the big realms right now is film That's the hardest hurdle to get past you can throw a web series on YouTube for a little less money But a cheap film is 30 million dollars, you know very often so that kind of money is very hard And so I could speak from experience. I have had people trying to make films from my books since I started publishing in 1995 Some closer than others and the independent guys are usually shut out of the conversation So then you're at the studio where people are literally asking you do the characters have to be black when you wonder why they are black That's why they're not black because of that conversation right there now. It's changing It's changing and I think we're in a situation now where black Filmmakers can lead and are leading like you mentioned Array and Eva de Verne But I've been to like say the bronze lens film festival in Atlanta the pan-African film festival in LA In a room just like this where a producer will stand up and say hey I want to fund the film come pitch me your idea And it's a meeting of a creator and a funder and boom, you know, I stood in line, too But she said oh, we don't do horror and I was the end of that But you never know right so it's It really is a matter of creating venues where people can meet and network and just make it happen That is the bottom line and film festivals are a good way to do that But they don't necessarily dry you folks right because you haven't made a movie. So it's it's Yeah, it's it's creating that space. Let's definitely talk about that though. Yes We'll have time for one more question Before we have to break Academic connections and I'm a scholar who is working on Afro surrealism and I find that my dissertation is kind of being pushed maybe a certain way because I'm being encouraged to Focus on the more European elements and I'm wondering how do you actually You know When you're writing about Afro futurism or Afro surrealism, how do you convince people convince an academic? academic Institutions that are still a majority white that you're not writing about the tell you in futurists or you're not writing about the European tradition even though you may have some connections or Conversations or cross-pollination with these things. How do you kind of claim that what you're doing and is is just what you're doing? It's it's your own. Yeah, I think you push back you start with Spaces like Sharon a Thomas is dark matter you look at Quite recently the black speckled arts manifesto by Rinaldo Anderson and they're the two books coming out after Afro-futurism 2.0 the black speckled arts movement. There's a great deal of scholarship Around now that actually I think it's proof positive that that can show that these particular Narratives are not being generated from the spaces that they're trying to kind of project upon your work, right? I also think that You know, we do we need to know come together and actually find mentorship Between each other to actually pull it together So let's have a conversation about that because there's there's a great deal of scholarship out There's a great deal like really powerful scholars at various, you know universities around the world. Actually, it's an anniversary with stating That that will have you back on things like that. So but it's it's a battle You know and you've asked a mouthful there. I've been blessed I was at Spellman where the department head dr. Tarsha Stanley was the president of the Octavia Butler Society So I didn't have to explain anything to her You know and at UCLA also again blessed that African-American studies department is really into it and and and but it's not always the case As you know, I would also say like if you have the option Try to get people on your committee that are gonna arrive for you Right here So because you need it you always need at least one person who's gonna be in your corner Who can advocate for you? So if you get to put your committee together with people like at least one person from outside of your school Then that's helpful Well, thank you. I had a this is wonderful. Thank you. Thank you Great conversation