When Octavia E. Butler bought her home in the Lake Forest Park neighborhood just north of Seattle, she wanted a few things. To be close to the city but not in the city. To be walking distance from public transportation, a grocery store, and a bookstore. I think about her every time I go to the Third Place Books in Lake Forest Park because that was her bookstore, the one she walked to from her house. I told that story on stage when Ijeoma Oluo had her book launch there in 2023, and now a few years later, this mural lives in the same bookstore Octavia would once frequent. Saw it for the first time yesterday, on my birthday.

Octavia, forever

📸 Ijeoma Oluo