Parable of the Sower Project
Exploring connections between literature and environment
Our Mission
Octavia E. Butler's novel Parable of the Sower was published in 1993, but imagines Southern California in 2024, facing environmental and social collapse. Through funding from the National Endowment for the Humanities, our project will use Butler's haunting story to explore humanist questions like what our responsibilities to one another and the environment are, how we create communities, and what gives meaning to our lives.
Upcoming events
February 18:
Pandora Thomas of Earthseed Farms will be presenting the 2025 Cummings Peace Lecture. Thomas is the founder of Earthseed Farms, a sustainable agricultural community in Sebastapol, CA, named for the religion articulated by the heroine of Butler’s Parable of the Sower. Established in 2021, Earthseed Farm celebrates Afro-Indigenous heritage through land stewardship. Thomas’ educational and environmental activism around permaculture and social equity has resulted in diverse projects around the world, from working with inmates at San Quentin to children in Indonesia, and more. The Cummings Lecture on World Peace is designed to explore topics relating to peace and reconciliation on a national and global scale. The lecture was inaugurated in 1990 and is made possible by the estate of Oliver deWolf, a University of Redlands alumnus of the class of 1921, and Edith M. Cummings.
March 18 and 19:
Nalo Hopkinson, prolific Sci-Fi and Fantasy author, will be on campus to give a key note lecture on Octavia E. Butler’s legacy and Black Speculative Fiction, as well as meeting with students. Formerly based at UCR, Hopkinson is a Caribbean-Canadian author and professor in the School of Creative Writing at the University of British Columbia. Author of over a dozen novels, plus collections of short stories and a new foray into graphic novels, Hopkinson has garnered a steady stream of awards since her first novel, Brown Girl in the Ring, was shortlisted for both the James Triptree and the Phillip K. Dick awards in 1998. The Science Fiction of America awarded her the Damon Knight Memorial award in 2021, making her the youngest recipient of the “Grand Master” award, and adding her name to a list that includes Robert Heinlein, Ursula K. LeGuin, Samuel R. Delaney, and other luminaries of Sci-Fi and Fantasy. Her novels combine cunning story-telling that draws from everything from “Bluebeard” to Shakespeare’s The Tempest with depictions of Caribbean cultural practices and beliefs. Her visit is made possible by funding from DAWGS.
