Maurice Broaddus's Blog, page 4

Panels, Panels, Panels (Virtual Me!)

This is the page home of my virtual appearances this year. At least those appearances that have a permanent home. Guest of Honor interviews, for example, were live-streamed but not archived.

ConCarolinas

Deathbuilding with Darin Kennedy, Jen Guberman, Maurice
Broaddus, and Michael G. Williams

Building A Professional Community In Speculative Fiction
with Quincy Allen, Emily Leverett, Emily Kaplan, and Maurice Broaddus

Toucan Tuesdays with Maurice Broaddus!

STORYTELLING: CHANGE FOR COMMUNITY CONVERSATION

[Heightened in times of crisis, it is key for our
community’s mutual survival to sustain and build authentic relationships. This
conversation features local artists and creatives as they share perspectives on
using art and storytelling as tools for building the future.]

Moderator: Maurice Broaddus

Panelists: Diop Adisa, Mariah Ivey, Keenan Rhodes

https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=735...

4th Street Fantasy (podcast)

This is Fine: Making Art While the World Burns

The internet makes information and disinformation equally
accessible, and media strategies make it impossible to effectively filter the
deluge of horrifying news and terrible takes. After 2016, many people were
walloped with the growing awareness that fascism is on the rise around the
world, inundated with stories that are endlessly awful and calls to act on all
of them. Here we are at another US election year occurring during an actual
pandemic, and we’ve had to continually learn new strategies to cope with Our
Trashfire of 2020. This is a panel to discuss how we continue to create art—and
why it’s as or more important than ever—without burning ourselves out or
failing to engage in the world at all.

Moderator: John Wiswell

Panelists: Maurice Broaddus, John Chu, C.L. Polk, Fran
Wilde

https://directory.libsyn.com/episode/...

AFROFUTURE FRIDAY: Black Futurists and Community Work

Today we’re at the intersection of technology and community work as we look at how futurity/technological concepts can be developed to specifically benefit our communities. In the age of intrusive surveillance and Big Data, how can we use technology to create the future we want to see?

We’ll
be in conversation with a couple of black futurists:

Rasul
Palmer stepping out from his role as co-facilitator for KI’s Afrofuture
Fridays, has been working with the Kheprw Institute for 12 years. He’s the lead
for their Democratizing Data initiative: an initiative to train and develop
inter-generational grassroots capacity in the public data field.

Madebo Fatunde is a foresight strategist and a
writer, building a practice at the intersection of arts, technology, and
culture. His passion is using storytelling about the future to empower better
decisions today. Some current projects of his include “The Blackchain”, a
speculative future which imagines a world around a Pan-African blockchain
network, and “Unmanned Ode”, a poetry collection exploring the codes of
masculinity composed alongside and against a neural network. He is a member of
the Foresight Practice Group at Autodesk and a founding member of The Guild of
Future Architects (https://futurearchitects.com/).

AFROFUTURE FRIDAY: Black Futurists and Community Work

AFROFUTURE FRIDAY: Black Futurists and Community Work

Posted by Kheprw Institute on Friday, 10 July 2020

Futurism
work creates blueprints to find new ways to understand ourselves and the world
around us. And, with its Afrofuture promise, it uses technology to help paint a
vivid portrait of what the world could look like.

Leave you with
this quote from Octavia Butler’s Parable of the Sower: “All that you touch you
Change. All that you Change Changes you. The only lasting truth is Change. God
Is Change.”

Go forth and be the change.

Books mentioned:

Parable of the Sower by Octavia Butler
The Fifth Season by N.K. Jemisin
Black Leopard, Red Wolf by Marlon James
Emergent Strategies by adrienne maree brown
The Chaos Point: The world at the crossroads by Ervin Laszlo
Teaching about the Future by Peter C. Bishop and Andy Hines
Race After Technology: Abolitionist Tools for the New Jim Code by Ruha Benjamin
Thinking in Systems: A Primer by Donella H. Meadows

Afrofuture Fridays brought to you by a partnership with folks we’d like to thank:

Protests And The Value Of Disruption

We must fight oppressive systems, but, as an Afrofuturist, I’m still dreaming of better days.

Look, my thoughts are a jumbled mess after the events of the last few weeks. Mentally, physically, emotionally, and spiritually drained, I’m doing the best I can. I suspect we all are, but let me start with this:

I’m tired.

Tired because I keep having to prove my humanity every day. I’m worn out because I keep seeing the same thing over and over again. The injustice. The brutalization of black bodies. The illusory gesticulations of concern from civic leaders. The inaction. The return to silence. The false tranquility. The injustice—again. The history of Indianapolis, its police, and the black community continues to be a repeating, tragic story.

And I’m tired.

[continue reading on The Indianapolis Monthly site]

AFROFUTURE FRIDAYS – Curating the End of the World/Creating New Futures: A Conversation with Dr. Reynaldo Anderson, Sheree Renee Thomas, and Andrew Rollins

The
theme of Afrofuture Fridays generally examines the questions: Where do we want
to be? Where are we now? How do we get there? All through the lends of some
aspect of black art.

Now
today is a special Afrofuture Friday. We were due to have a two-day event of
Afrofuture Friday and Afrofuturism 2.0, but then Covid-19 happened. While that
has been delayed, we did want to have a bit of a taste of some of the folks who
were going to participate in that.

So,
gathered here today are some of the preeminent voices in Afrofuturism, Dr.
Reynaldo Anderson, Sheree Renee Thomas, and Andrew Rollins. We’ll be discussing:

Afrofuturism BC (Before
Covid-19) and AC (After Covid-19): From 1619 to Covid19, we’ll be discussing
the role of Afrofuturism in navigating our current situation and moving
forward.

#Afrocentricty   #Afropessimism  #Antiblackness #Afrofuturism 2.0

Live: Curating the End of the World & Creating New Futures: A Conversation with Dr. Reynaldo Anderson, Sheree Renee Thomas, and Andrew Rollins

We are excited to announce that we are helping to organize an online conference featuring keynote speakers and our friend Dr. Jessica Gordon Nembhard who is the author of Collective Courage: A History of African-American Economic Thought and Practice, which chronicles the long history of economic cooperation in African-American communities.

Posted by Kheprw Institute on Saturday, 16 May 2020

Dr.
Reynaldo Anderson
currently serves as an Associate Professor of Communication at Harris-Stowe
State University in Saint Louis Missouri. Reynaldo is currently the executive
director and co-founder of the Black Speculative Arts Movement (BSAM) a network
of artists, curators, intellectuals and activists.  Finally, he is the co-editor of the book Afrofuturism 2.0: The Rise of
Astro-Blackness published by Lexington books, co-editor of Cosmic Underground: A Grimoire of Black
Speculative Discontent published by Cedar Grove Publishing, co-editor of The Black Speculative Art Movement: Black
Futurity, Art+Design by Lexington books, the co-editor of Black Lives, Black Politics, Black Futures,
special issue of TOPIA: Canadian Journal of Cultural Studies, and co-editor of When is Wakanda: Afrofuturism and Dark
Speculative Futurity Journal of Futures Studies.

Sheree Renée Thomas creates art inspired by myth and folklore, natural science and conjure, and the genius culture created in the Mississippi Delta. She is the author of Nine Bar Blues: Stories from an Ancient Future(Third Man Books, May 26, 2020), her first fiction collection. She is also the author of two multigenre/hybrid collections, Sleeping Under the Tree of Life, longlisted for the 2016 Otherwise Award and Shotgun Lullabies (Aqueduct Press), described as a “revelatory work like Jean Toomer’s Cane.” She edited the two-time World Fantasy Award-winning volumes, Dark Matter, that first introduced W.E.B. Du Bois’s work as science fictionand was the first black author to be honored with the World Fantasy Award since its inception in 1975. She serves as the Associate Editor of Obsidian: Literature & Arts in the African Diaspora (Illinois State University, Normal). She lives in Memphis, Tennessee. Connect: IG/FB: @shereereneethomas  or Twitter:@blackpotmojo 

Andrew Rollins is a writer and lecturer on Afrofuturism. His chapter “Our Old Ship of Zion: The Black Church in Post Modernity” appears in the anthology, AFROFUTURISM 2.0: THE RISE OF ASTRO BLACKNESS.  He has two chapters in the anthology, COSMIC UNDERGROUND: A GRIMOIRE OF BLACK SPECULATIVE DISCONTENT: “The Oddities of Nature” (about the life, theology and ministry of Bishop Charles Mason, the founder of the Church of God in Christ) and “The Harmonics and Modalities of Metaphysical Blackness” (an interpretation of Modern Jazz as an expression of Afro-Orientalism). Rollins has spoken on futurism and speculative art at conferences on topics including Transhumanism and the Prophetic Voice of the Black Church; Dark Politics and the Occult; The Ethics of Survival and Black Slave Religion the Roots of Afrofuturism.

RECOMMENDED READING LIST:

Books by/with Dr. Reynaldo Anderson

Afrofuturism 2.0: The Rise of Astro-Blackness

Cosmic Underground: A Grimoire of Black Speculative Discontent

The Black Speculative Art Movement: Black Futurity, Art+Design

RECOMMENDATIONS: Capital is Dead: Is This Something Worse? (McKenzie Wark)

Tendai Huchu short story: “The Sale”

Books by/with Sheree Renée Thomas

Nine Bar Blues: Stories from an Ancient Future (her latest collection!)

Sleeping Under the Tree of Life (collection)

Shotgun Lullabies (collection)

Dark Matter: A Century of Speculative Fiction from the African Diaspora (anthology)

Obsidian: Literature & Arts in the African Diaspora (journal)

RECOMMENDATIONS: The City We Became: A Novel (N.K. Jemisin)

Cosmic Slop (George Clinton anthology series)

Tendai Huchu short story: “Space Traders” (in Dark Matter)

Books by/with Andrew Rollins

Afrofuturism 2.0: The Rise of Astro-Blackness

Cosmic Underground: A Grimoire of Black Speculative Discontent

RECOMMENDATIONS: Edward W. Blyden’s Intellectual Transformations: Afropublicanism, Pan-Africanism, Islam, and the Indigenous West African Church (Harry N. K. Odamtten)

Books by/with Maurice Broaddus
Pimp My Airship
The Usual Suspects
Buffalo Soldier
The Voices of Martyrs (collection)
RECOMMENDATIONS: The Fifth Season (N.K. Jemisin)

Afrofuture Fridays brought to you by a partnership with folks we’d like to thank:

Afrofuture Friday: Parable of the Sower Discussion

The theme of our Afrofuturism Fridays discussions is to ponder the questions “Where are we now?” “Where do we want to be?” and “How do we get there?” because we have to imagine the future we want to see.

Let’s start with a re-cap of Octavia Butler and her seminal work Parable of the Sower.

Who was Octavia E. Butler?

(AP Photo/ Seattle Post-Intelligencer, Joshua Trujillo)

Born in 1947 in Pasadena, California, her mother was a maid and her father a shoe shine man who died when she was seven. She was raised in a strict Baptist home by her mother and grandmother. Though introverted and socially awkward, and having severe dyslexia, she spent hours reading science fiction and fantasy in her public library.

When she was 10, she saw the B-movie “Devil Girl from Mars” which changed her life. She had two epiphanies: “Someone got paid to write that.” And “I could write better than that.” So she convinced her mom to buy her a typewriter.

A well-intentioned aunt told her that “Negroes can’t be writers.”

She graduated high school in 1965 and began to take night classes at a local community college. She entered and won a fiction writing contest with a draft that would become Kindred, her best-selling novel. While working a series of temp jobs, she was encouraged by science fiction great, Harlan Ellison, to keep writing.

In 1984, her short story “Speech Sounds” (about the unraveling of civilization when a disease renders everyone mute) won the Hugo for Best Short Story. The next year she won the Hugo and Locus Awards for her novella Bloodchild. Parable of the Sower came out in 1993 and Parable of the Talents in 1998, the latter won the Nebula Award for Best Science Fiction novel. In 1995 she became the first science fiction writer to win a MacArthur “Genius” Award.

The Parable series was supposed to be at least a trilogy, but researching it proved too depressing for her so she gave herself a break by writing a science fiction vampire novel called Fledgling. It was her 14th and final book. She died of a stroke in 2006.

She inspired a generation of writers (myself included – I sent out my first story in 1993).

Parable of the Sower

[If you haven’t had a chance to read the book, here’s a Crash Course Literature by John Greene.]

Octavia Butler has said that she came to this of the future by imagining our current problems progressing unchecked to their logical ends. How prescient was Butler? Here’s a taste:

“Choose your leaders with wisdom and forethought. To be led by a coward is to be controlled by all that the coward fears. To be led by a fool is to be led by the opportunists who control the fool. To be led by a thief is to offer up your most precious treasures to be stolen. To be led by a liar is to ask to be lied to. To be led by a tyrant is to sell yourself and those you love into slavery.”

That quote was about a presidential candidate running on the platform “Make America Great Again” … which she wrote in 1998. And that was in the sequel, Parable of the Talents. Her work combines imagination with social, political, and even religious practice. It creates blueprints to find new ways to understand ourselves and the world around us. And, with its Afrofuture promise, it paints a vivid portrait of what the world could look like. In our discussion we’ll be looking at themes in the book focusing on community strategies to survive a dystopian landscape as well as a discussion on what transformative justice may look like.

LIVE Parable of the Sower: Online Book Discussion

LIVE Parable of the Sower: Online Book Discussion.

Posted by Kheprw Institute on Friday, 10 April 2020

Afrofuture Fridays brought to you by a partnership with folks we’d like to thank:

[PATREON] MARCH/APRIL ROUND UP

First off, I’ll just leave this right here…

Anyway, my new novella, “Bound by Sorrow,” is up on the Beneath Ceaseless Skies site. Here’s a summary (part of the review on the Hugo nominated Quick Sips Reviews site):

Dinga is a warrior on a journey to deliver his dead sister to the Dreaming City, a city where gods still live. Accompanied by the irreverent bard Gerard, Dinga’s journey is punctuated by stories, his own and those he encounters, which illuminate his life and his mission and the mythology all around him. It’s a story very much about grief, and power of confronting grief in different ways. There’s an epic sweep to the piece a deep history that might be historical (fantasy), building this very living feel of each layer of story, reaching forward through time from Dinga to the reader, and perhaps beyond. It’s a story that unfolds and unpacks a lot over its novella length, but never loses sight of its thematic core of grief, death, dreams, and choices.

READ THE REVIEW OF THE STORY HERE (spoilers: it’s a great review)

LEARN SOME OF THE BACKGROUND OF THE STORY HERE (spoilers: I blame Brian Keene)

Over on the Patreon:

[AWESOME PIC] Ferb – In this time of anxiety, inconvenience,
and sacrifice … our cat Ferb still refuses to drink out of any other bowl or
faucet. #wakeupmeows

[AWESOME BLOG POST] The life update post that I did for
Brian Keene’s site (except with bonus additions)

[AWESOME PIMPING] SoS ch 4 (a sneak preview of a work in
progress)

[AWESOME COMMUNITY] COMMUNITY REPORT – March/April (the work slows, but doesn’t stop)

As always, I appreciate your support of my Patreon. Words cannot express how encouraging it is, especially during these dark times. I really appreciate it…and each and every one of you. Thank you!

I launched a Patreon because some friends wanted a way to help support the work that I do in the community. If you would like to support it (and receive updates on the work that’s being done) please feel free to join. Thank you so much!
Become a Patron!

Twenty. Years.

April 1st, 2000

April 1st, 2020 (Pandemic Celebration mode)

“Bound by Sorrow” now up!

My novelette, “Bound by Sorrow,” is now up on Beneath Ceaseless Skies!

Remembering our past…

“All journeys are born of death.” The eyes of the Wise One glistened as he spoke. “Let me tell you a story. Each word in its place; none forgotten. The order is sacred, exactly as I once heard it. You would do well to heed its wisdom, young warrior.”

A great drama played out behind the old man’s eyelids so plainly the warrior could almost behold it. The campfire flickered in his eyes, which no longer focused on the young warrior but were lost recalling the words to the story. The warrior took a stone that fit snugly into his palm and sharpened his blade. When matters of life and duty became too much, threatening to drag him under the sea billows of life, he kept his head down and focused on what he knew he did best.

[Continue reading on Beneath Ceaseless Skies]

Pulling back the curtain Part I

Let me start by saying that BRIAN KEENE is like the older brother I never wanted (along with WRATH JAMES WHITE). Like, to the point where my baby sister’s (RO TOWNSEND) argument about sibling reparations almost begins to make sense.

A couple years ago, I drove out to visit Brian. At one point
during our usual hilarious shenanigans, we got into an extended conversation
which veered into the deeply personal. He asked me if I’d ever written about my
sister’s death. I told him that I hadn’t. He then goes all in telling me that,
since he knows me, if I haven’t written about it, I haven’t dealt with it
because that’s what I do.

Mind you, we decide to have this intimate conversation in the middle of his podcast. As one does.

When my father was diagnosed with his cancer, I began to
write a story about a young warrior poet dealing with the death of his sister
who ends up encountering an orisha dealing with his dying father. I had already
been thinking about the rituals of grief by reading Francis Weller’s The Wild
Edge of Sorrow: Rituals of Renewal and the Sacred Work of Grief. And, well, I
actually wrote the death scene of the father four days before my father passed
away.

What was supposed to be a 5,000-word story turned out to be
closer to 20,000. Apparently, I had a lot to work through. To my friends I
referred to it as the container of my grief, something I *had* to write to deal
with everything going on. Stuff I had to get out in order to move forward (in
my life and in my other writing). Anyway, I cut close to the bone to write it
and it was a challenging piece to write.

All this to say that “Bound by Sorrow” is a deeply personal
story for a lot of reasons. As well as an Afrofuturist/Sword and Soul adventure
story, because that’s also what I do.

The bottom line is that sometimes I really can’t stand
Brian. Even moreso when he’s right.

And, btw, a very special shout out to CHEF OYA (of The Trap). She knows why she’s awesome.

Pulling back the curtain Part II

The name Luci may seem out of place. Let me tell you that
story:

One day I came into my classroom and one of my students is
sitting in my chair with her feet up on my desk.

              “Mr.
Broaddus, we need to talk,” she says.

              “Okay.”

              “I need
to be in your next story.”

              “Okay. A
couple things: one, get out of my chair. Two, my next story is about going
through grief.”

              “Okay
then, you have to write the character bio.”

              “That’s fine,”
she says, undeterred. “I can help you with that.”

So, she wrote a paragraph about how beautiful, smart, and
funny “her character” had to be. And that she should be a princess. It was a
pretty solid character sketch, so I wanted to honor it (and she approved of my
line about being a princess).

[PATREON] FEBRUARY ROUND UP

Okay, I need the record to reflect that I have turned in the first draft of my novel, Sweep of Stars, a short play for the Indiana Repertory Theater, and a project for D&D. I am currently working on two short stories and the rewrites for my second middle grade novel, Unfadeable. Thus endeth my note for those folks wanting to keep me accountable for getting my writing done.

BTW, the 2020 Mo*Con: Origins lineup has been announced.

Anyway, for this month’s round-up on Patreon we have:

AWESOME PICS – Ferb sexy pics, because my cat is ridiculous

AWESOME BLOG POST – My Odd Journey to Being a Full-Time Novelist

AWESOME PIMPING – Sneak Preview of Sweep of Stars in draft

COMMUNITY REPORT – More on what I’ve been out and about doing in the community (with pictures), covering my 5th Grade Classroom Tour, Afrofuture Friday, Zora!, Cafe Creative, and more! Pretty much, this is the reason you all support my Patreon and I really appreciate it. Thank you!

I launched a Patreon because some friends wanted a way to help support the work that I do in the community. If you would like to support it (and receive updates on the work that’s being done) please feel free to join. Thank you so much!

Become a Patron!

Afrofuture Fridays – Pimp My Airship by Maurice Broaddus

Join us for a special discussion with the Kheprw Institute’s resident Afrofuturist, Maurice Broaddus, led by Dr. Leah Milne about his novel, Pimp My Airship.

The book reimagines a retrofuture Indianapolis in a world where America lost the Revolutionary War, remains a colony of England, and has various oppressive systems in place. But art (and artists) lead the way for changing the system:

All the poet called Sleepy wants to do is spit his verses, smoke chiba, and stay off the COP’s radar—all of which becomes impossible once he encounters a professional protestor known as (120 Degrees of) Knowledge Allah. They soon find themselves on the wrong side of local authorities and have to elude the powers that be.

When young heiress Sophine Jefferson’s father is murdered, the careful life she’d been constructing for herself tumbles around her. She’s quickly drawn into a web of intrigue, politics and airships, joining with Sleepy and Knowledge Allah in a fight for their freedom. Chased from one end of a retro-fitted Indianapolis to the other, they encounter outlaws, the occasional circus, possibly a medium, and more outlaws. They find themselves in a battle much larger than they imagined: a battle for control of the country and the soul of their people.

Read the first chapter here.

Here’s what’s been said about it:

“Imagine the anarchic spirit of Sorry to Bother You given a turn away from body horror and toward steampunk.” — B&N Sci-fi & Fantasy Blog

“Broaddus has managed to create what could be considered a steampunk classic in the years to come. The contemporary relevance, prose, and characterization make this a book that cannot be missed.” — Pyles of Books

Maurice Broaddus’ essay “Steampunk as Afrofuturism”

Profile on Maurice Broaddus on Ozy.com: “Meet the Man Behind Afrofuturist Steampunk”

Afrofuture Fridays brought to you by a partnership with folks we’d like to thank: