One City, One Read: Parable of the Sower

Join the Festival, the New Haven Free Public Library, the Yale Schwarzman Center and partners across the city in celebrating the magnificent work of Octavia Butler's Parable of the Sower as One City, One Read. Featuring events citywide inspired by and related to the core themes and values of Parable, there will be something for everyone: from performances and screenings to lectures, panels, and guided discussions.

A startlingly prescient science fiction masterwork, Parable of the Sower is the “brilliant, endlessly rich” (John Green, New York Times) story of Lauren Olamina, a 15-year-old Black girl in a not-too-distant future of climate catastrophe and economic devastation. After her family home is burned to the ground, she travels through California on foot, powered by her near-prophetic belief in the only constant in life being Change, and in her journeys gathers followers to become the community known as Earthseed. Parable received a 1995 Nebula Award and was a New York Times Bestseller in 2020 due to its relatable themes of social inequality, climate change, infrastructure collapse, and migration. 

Parable has seen a second life, including a graphic novel adaptation by award-winning graphic novelists John Jennings and Damian Duffy, a podcast with activist and writer Adrienne Maree Brown and composer Toshi Reagon and Bernice Johnson Reagon’s opera adaptation. 

In New Haven, One City, One Read will be fully immersed across artistic organizations of the Elm City. Partners include the New Haven Free Public Library, Artspace New Haven, Best Video Film & Cultural Center, Yale Schwarzman Center, Elm City LIT Fest, Albertus Magnus College, Bethesda Lutheran Church, New Haven Public Schools, Downtown Evening Soup Kitchen, Gateway Community College, Inner City News, and more. 

These deep collaborative partnerships will present more than 20 different themed events over the course of the spring and summer. These are the currently confirmed events. Watch this space for updates!