Octavia Butler...

I didn't know Octavia Butler well -- we met at the Conference on the Fantastic in the Arts in Florida and we ate together and talked, and she was incredibly tall and wise and imposing. We shared an agent, Merrilee Heifetz, but I loved her books and somehow thought of her as a permanent presence, although nobody ever is...

http://darkush.blogspot.com/2006/02/octavia-butler-died-saturday.html