Your Hosts

A friendship that spans decades

Tananarive Due (tah-nah-nah-REEVE doo)
Monica A. Coleman
Isolated, uncertain, anxious, and grieving

our story

Two months into a global health pandemic, and we had all the feels

But literature lovers, Tananarive Due and Monica A. Coleman found empathy, hope and cues for survival in the writing of Afrofuturist author Octavia Butler. A text exchange: Want to talk about how the world is looking like “Parable of the Sower”? Let’s invite others to talk about it with us.

Friends Monica A. Coleman and Tananarive Due invite writers, scholars, and community leaders to share about their love for Octavia Butler’s work and the wisdom we can glean from her.

Each month, we all find a way forward with more insight, hope, and strategy. We find the creativity to re-make this world.

Tananarive Due (tah-nah-nah-REEVE doo)

is an award-winning author who teaches Black Horror and Afrofuturism at UCLA. She is an executive producer on Shudder's groundbreaking documentary Horror Noire: A History of Black Horror. A leading voice in black speculative fiction for more than 20 years, Due has won an American Book Award, an NAACP Image Award, and a British Fantasy Award, and her writing has been included in best-of-the-year anthologies

Monica A. Coleman

is an ordained Christian minister, an initiate of traditional Yoruba religion and Professor of Africana Studies at the University of Delaware. She is the author or editor of six books, and several articles and book chapters that focus on the role of faith in addressing critical social and philosophical issues. Coleman speaks widely on religious pluralism, religion and mental health, and navigating change.

All that you touch You Change. All that you Change Changes you. The only lasting truth Is Change.

Octavia E. Butler