SBF Presents: Local Author Corner with Kendra R. Parker

The Savannah Book Festival  celebrates literature in all its forms. This month we focus on biography. Local author Kendra R. Parker is a Professor of English at Georgia Southern University and was a Free Festival Saturday Author at the 2026 Festival. She is the author of Understanding Octavia E. Butler, Black Female Vampires in African American Women’s Novels, 1977-2011, and The Bloomsbury Handbook to Octavia E. Butler. 

SBF: Having previously served as a volunteer and attended Headliner Addresses, how did it feel to return as an Author?

Professor Parker: We had a fantastic time at the 2024 SBF,  attending the Headliner Events, the VIP Author Party thanks to Nancy Cintron, and of course Free Festival Saturday. It was such a good experience that I knew I wanted to volunteer the following year. So I was a 2025 volunteer. My book was released two months after SBF 2025, and I thought, “Why not submit my book?  What’s the worst that could happen?”

Returning as a presenting author felt completely different. The behind-the-scenes logistics were staggering—itineraries, wristbands, emails, required appearances, last-minute changes—but it gave me such a new appreciation for what it takes to make the Festival run.

More than anything, though, it felt affirming. To move from sitting in the audience listening to writers I admire to standing in front of a room representing our local writing community—it felt like a full-circle moment. Surreal, yes. But also grounding. It reminded me that literary communities aren’t just something you attend; they’re something you grow into.

SBF: What does it mean to see local author representation at the Festival, and how did the Savannah audience engage with your specific research during the 19th annual event?

Professor Parker: It was so great to meet fellow local author and Georgia Southern professor Bennett Parten. I was honestly a little surprised that my book was selected, considering that local authors often have a regional focus in the way that Bennett’s book does. But I also know that The Savannah Book Festival features both fiction and nonfiction, and there are readers all across the world who love Octavia E. Butler’s work—so much so that three biographies on her came out last year, mine being one of them. In that sense, it felt meaningful to represent Savannah not just locally, but intellectually—to show that scholarship rooted here can speak to a much wider literary conversation.

The audience was so receptive, and I think that’s in part because this wasn’t an academic presentation. One of the requirements as a Free Festival Saturday presenter was to talk about my journey as a writer, and I was particularly vulnerable with this crowd about my journey to writing this book.

I told the audience that when Linda Wagner-Martin, the series editor for the Understanding Contemporary American Literature Series at the University of South Carolina Press, emailed to ask if I’d be willing to write this book, I deleted the email. There was so much grief around my mentor passing, and the state of the world felt so heavy at that time. I just didn’t feel like I should be writing a book. I was already carrying so much.

I remember hearing the audible gasps when I shared that part of the story—my hesitation before saying yes. There was laughter, too, in some moments. And afterward, so many people came up to me asking to have the book signed for themselves, their children, their partners, their friends, and sharing how much Butler’s work meant to them or how they felt inspired to learn more about her through my presentation. That engagement felt genuine. It wasn’t about theory or academic framing—it was about connection.

SBF: This year’s Festival highlighted Octavia E. Butler across different mediums, with John Jennings and Damian Duffy presenting their graphic novel adaptation of Parable of the Talents. Did you have the opportunity to connect with them?

Professor Parker: I feel like John Jennings and Damian Duffy are now my best friends. One of the things I loved most about listening to them talk about Butler is that they think of her as their third collaborator—or, in the case of their most recent graphic novel adaptation, the fourth. As someone who works primarily through scholarly analysis of her language and themes, it was mind-blowing to hear how they approach the same material visually. It was so wild to hear about their entire process of translating something from straight text into image and text—about the physical toll it took on their bodies and the mental toll it took on their psyche, especially when grappling with, visualizing, and internalizing some of Butler’s most difficult passages.

It’s one thing to know that adaptation is complex. I knew that. It’s another thing entirely to understand the gravity of reimagining those worlds visually—what it demands physically, mentally, emotionally, physiologically. I’ve taught their graphic novel adaptation of Kindred and know how breathtaking it can be in the classroom, but hearing them describe what it took to create that impact deepened my appreciation for their work in ways I didn’t know was possible.