Authors: Felicia Luna Lemus & Lynell George

Felicia Luna Lemus discussing Particulate Matter

Lynell George discussing A Handful Of Sky: The World Of Octavia Butler

Particulate Matter is the story of a year in Felicia Luna Lemus’s marriage when the world turned upside down. It’s set in Los Angeles, and it’s about love and crisis, loss and grief, the city and the ocean, ancestral ghosts and history haunting. Nature herself seemed to howl. Fires raged and covered the house Lemus and her spouse shared in ash. Everything crystallized. It was the most challenging and terrifying time she had ever experienced, and yet it was also a time when the sublime beauty of the everyday shone through with particular power and presence. (Akashic Books)

A Handful of Earth, A Handful of Sky: The World of Octavia E. Butler offers a blueprint for a creative life from the perspective of award-winning science-fiction writer and “MacArthur Genius” Octavia E. Butler. It is a collection of ideas about how to look, listen, breathe – how to be in the world. This book is about the creative process, but not on the page; its canvas is much larger. Author Lynell George not only engages the world that shaped Octavia E. Butler, she also explores the very specific processes through which Butler shaped herself–her unique process of self-making. It’s about creating a life with what little you have–hand-me-down books, repurposed diaries, journals, stealing time to write in the middle of the night, making a small check stretch–bit by bit by bit. Highly visual and packed with photographs of Butler’s ephemera, A Handful of Earth, A Handful of Sky draws the reader into Butler’s world, creating a sense of unmatched intimacy with the deeply private writer.

A Handful of Earth, A Handful of Sky brings Octavia’s prescient wisdom and careful thinking out of the novel and into the world. (Angel City Press)