Krista Franklin Included in Profile of Chicago's Afrofuturist Writers

Krista Franklin, who teaches in the School’s Writing department, has been featured in Chicago magazine’s roundup of the city’s Afrofuturist poets and writers. Franklin, who also works as a mixed-media collagist, is most widely known for her art book SEED (The Book of Eve)—inspired by Octavia Butler’s seminal work—as well as her poetry, which has been published in Poetry magazine and the 2015 anthology The Breakbeat Poets. Afrofuturism, a term used to describe the broad array of speculative works that address African diaspora, is most often focused on the possibilities of the future. When asked if she is optimistic about Chicago’s future, Franklin says, “I don’t think I even know what optimism means. I’m a realist, and I always have been. What I see from the artists, visionaries, writers, musicians, scholars, designers, and intellectuals who surround me is that Chicago’s future is strong and vibrant. The future is happening now.”