A thoroughly enjoyable read. I recommend this book to anyone that wants to know more about Octavia E. Butler through her own words. It was interesting to learn more about her life and writing process in this series of interviews.

This collection of interviews provides great insight into the lives and works of Octavia Butler. I enjoyed hearing her speak with different interviewers and the different aspects of her life and work each interviewer focused on. If you are a fan of Octavia Butler, this text is helpful in providing further insight into her and what she was attempting to do in her work. Overall, I would highly recommend this book for anyone looking to learn more about one of the predominant scene fiction writers of our time.

This series is the perfect companion for fans of authors like Octavia butler and bell hooks. I devoured this book. It gave me a deeper understanding of the culture and history surrounding butler’s writing career.

Getting insight into one of the great minds of the last 100 years is so invaluable, This is one of the best in this series.

A wonderful addition to any library that appreciates the impactful works of Octavia Butler. This helps to give readers a better understanding of not only her works but who she was herself. A gift to fans new and old alike.

Octavia E. Butler: The Last Interview
and Other Conversations

I am so happy I read this book! Actually, I am happy and grateful. I first read Octavia Butler when my science fiction book club read Kindred a few years ago (we loved it but felt it was fantasy and not science fiction). I read her collection Bloodchild and Other Stories when I got it in a nebula award winning humble numbed and really enjoyed it. After that I would buy kindle editions of all of her series when the collected editions went on sale and I read and loved the Xenogenesis trilogy. But her other books stayed on my TBR shelf, getting passed over for newer things.

So I was intrigued when I saw this collection of interviews with Octavia Butler on NetGalley - it seemed like a real sign from the universe.

I have a secret to confess. I love afterwards/acknowledgments in books. I often (actually always) read them first because I love to know what an author was thinking when they wrote their book. So this collection was fantastic for me! It was like an entire book of acknowledgements!!! It helped me remember why I loved Ms. Butler’s writing and her way of thinking about the world. Since I finished this I’ve read Wild Seed and Parable of the Sower and I can’t wait to dive into the next Octavia Butler book on my virtual shelf. I highly recommend this book.

This is a great collection of interviews on Butler. As a Butler enthusiast this is a welcomed addition to my Butler collection. I highly recommend.

Thank you NetGalley and Melville House Publishing for the Advanced Reader Copy!

Receiving the ARC couldn't have come at a better time; I'm in the middle of reading the last book in Octavia Bulter's Lilith's Brood trilogy! It was so lovely to read this collection of interviews and hear Bulter describe and contextualize her work in her own words, especially since she passed away way too early (and "hearing" her say that she imagined herself continuing to write into her 80s was heartbreaking!). I already loved Bulter prior to reading this collection, but now I exponentially love her more! This interview collection had a bit of everything with each focusing on different accept of her work and Bulter herself with some overlap. However, since the interviews were ordered chronologically, you could see how Bulter answered the same question over the years and how those responses changed as she did. Reading about her talking about her other books made me really excited to continue reading through her body of work. She was SO ahead of her time and worthy of so much recognition for her incredible prose. This collection is definitely a must-have if you are a Bulter fan!

OCTAVIA E. BUTLER: THE LAST INTERVIEW AND OTHER CONVERSATIONS is a collection of 10 interviews with Octavia Butler, 3 of which haven’t been published before. I was concerned that this book might be too similar to CONVERSATIONS WITH OCTAVIA BUTLER, but that wasn’t the case! Only a few interviews are shared between the books. This book offers more insight into her personal life, early career, and personality. There are also in-depth conversations about the inspiration for her stories and nuanced discussions of politics and race.

My favourite moment from these interviews is when Octavia is asked about writing what she knows, and instead she mentions that she writes what she cares about. She says: “my novels are the best of me. My novels and short stories are the best I have to offer. What I’ve done all my life is tell stories. Find the things I really care about and then tell the stories.”

Octavia’s caring nature is apparent in these interviews as she discusses her worries for the environment, reflects on her childhood and familial relationships, and explains why she writes stories. Contextualizing her work this way makes me see her in a new light—I’ve always thought of her as a thoughtful writer but now I better understand the ways in which she cared about the world, cared about reflecting herself and other Black women in SFF books, and about stories in general. Her determination and brilliance shine through in these interviews. I feel lucky that we’re still getting opportunities to know Octavia 17 years after her passing. This book is an insightful read for any fan of her work, and a worthy addition to collections of books by and about her.

My thanks to NetGalley and Melville House Publishing for providing me with an eARC.

Rating: 4.5/5

A great selection of interviews. So upsetting that we lost Butler so soon. I felt a twinge every time she said she expected to be 80 and still writing.

Originally posted on my blog Nonstop Reader.

Octavia E. Butler: The Last Interview: and Other Conversations is a very well curated collection of recollections, interviews, and vignettes by/about/and featuring Octavia Butler. Released 19th Sept 2023 by Melville House, it's 192 pages and is available in paperback and ebook formats.

Octavia Butler was a powerhouse author and a brilliant human being. Her practicality and intelligence shine in these articles and interviews which span decades from her early career (1979 Thrust interview with Jeffrey Elliott) through a 2006 podcast shortly before her death. She is always articulate and well spoken and offers astute insights into human nature, speculative fiction, authors and the craft of creative writing, being a minority voice in an overwhelmingly white (at the time) field, and her lived experiences.

This book is part of a series of Last Interviews with authors, cultural icons, writers, and musicians. The interviews included in this volume are arranged in roughly chronological order and give an interesting overview and some insights into ways her interactions changed over her career, or at least her interactions with interviewers. The introduction by Samuel R. Delany is warmly and respectfully written and adds a lot to the overall book.

This is a short but vitally interesting collection for fans of the author, and would be a good choice for public or school library acquisition (along with the rest of the series), as well as for fans of the author's work and potentially for more formal classroom instruction.

Five stars.

Disclosure: I received an ARC at no cost from the author/publisher for review purposes.

If you love Octavia Butler, Black speculative writers or are simply looking for a new coffee table book “Octavia E. Butler: The Last Interview” is a must buy. The Last Interview is a series of books that highlight hard to find and unpublished interviews by creative geniuses in art, music, writing, etc. These interviews are transcripts that you won’t find on Google or YouTube.

Octavia Butler’s feature is curated by fellow speculative fiction writer and her long-time friend Samuel R. Delany. There’s a really nice introduction that describes their relationship and provides more insight into Octavia Butler as a writer, but also as a person and a friend.

Octavia Butler’s impact on the writing community is huge, and a few interviews really stuck out to me and provide additional context on Butler’s writing journey and the publishing world more broadly.

In an interview with Terry Gross of Fresh Air, Butler revealed that she found the path to publishing her first three books to be extremely easy. However, with “Kindred” publishers and editors felt that it was a “Black” book and gave her a lot of grief about it’s viability in the book world. I find this interesting, because in my opinion, “Kindred” is written for a white progressive more than it appeals to Black audiences.

There’s many more interesting tidbits in the book. It’s definitely worth adding to your collection.

Rating: 5/5

Thank you to NetGalley and Melville House Publishing for this ARC in exchange for an honest review.

Great set of interviews, selected so there is only a little bit of repetition in the information. Terry Gross is by far the best interviewer of the bunch. Better questions, better back-and-forth and follow-ups.

As a long time Butler fan this collection of interviews throughout her life was incredibly fascinating. Ultimately if your a fan of Butler or SFF in general thai is a must read.

This was really interesting- a collection of interviews with Octavia Butler from early in her career to just before her death. She's smart, funny, and down-to-earth. And hearing her perspective on genre fiction, on being one of the only Black authors (let alone Black women) in SFF, and on the intent of her own work gives an added layer of insight. I love Butlers work and recommend this to anyone is also a fan. It is tragic hearing her talk about her long term plans when we lost her too early. I received a copy of this book for review via NetGalley, all opinions are my own.

Thankyou to Melville House and Netgalley for this ARC in exchange for an honest review.

This was a wonderful collection of interviews! Reading Butler’s responses made her come alive and I found myself imagining I was part of an audience soaking up her words. Gone too soon, this collection definitely reminds us to give Butler her flowers – her mind, her thinking, her EVERYTHING was one of a kind.

I will say, however, to pace yourself reading these interviews. I sat through a few in one seating and felt I was reading the same thing over and over again (the nature of an interview I suppose – they tend to ask the same questions).

My one biggest issue with my reading experience was the ARC itself: the formatting and typos took me straight out and I seriously considered DNF’ing because I’m not exaggerating when I say it was hurting my eyes. But for Octavia Butler I suffered through it. Hoping it’s fixed for the final release (which I’m sure it will be.)

All in all, I loved “listening” to Butler and I suddenly have the urge to reread Kindred.

The last Interview is a non fiction series in which each book has a series of interviews leading up to the last one they ever did. In this book, we're reading Octavia Butler's interviews.

Typos and formatting was distracting but that's just the arc, so that has no bearing on the book when it actually comes out, assuming those get cleaned up.

I adore Octavia Butler's writing, and honestly was super intrigued to read some interviews with her spanning decades. I wanted to learn more about her, and her process. I just love the way she speaks. She's very direct, and I respond well to that kind of candor. She knew exactly who she was, and it translated in her responses.

My favorite interview was the one she did in 1993, it's a few interviews in. The interviewer asked really great questions that elicited new, and thoughtful answers from Octavia. Then there's an interview she has in 2002 where she hits pretty close to home in predicting the future (our present).

This volume is a great collection of interviews with Butler, looking at her life, her upbringing, specific books, and her career overall. Fans of her work will find the interviews here insightful and useful, and scholars of Butler's work will find this invaluable.

I always enjoy reading these Last Interview books as they make the person their having conversations with alive again. I got to know Octavia E. Butler through this book and I’m glad I read this.

I'm so happy to have read this book!
Previous to this book I had read Dawn, Adulthood Rides and Bloodchild. Imago and Kindred are waiting on my shelves. But now, now I want to read everything. I cannot wait to have the Patternist series in my hands.

With this collection of interviews you get to know some interesting bits about her writing and her creative process. Some anecdotes and some glimpses of her life. They are sometimes a little bit repetitive but it is understandable as some questions are staples to introduce the writer to those particular audiences/magazines etc.

The last interview is heart-wrenching as Butler still had ideas and was still writing, but she knew she was having health problems. Let's keep reading her work and honoring her art.

Thank you for this advanced copy.