Cal State LA To Honor Executive Producer Of Marvel's Luke Cage At Eagle-Con

California State University, Los Angeles will honor fiction writer and editor Nalo Hopkinson and writer and producer Cheo Hodari Coker during Eagle-Con, a celebration of science fiction, fantasy, comic books, and superheroes.

The theme of this year's Eagle-Con is "Aliens, Monsters and Others!" The event will be held March 8-10 on the campus of Cal State LA.

The three-day convention will explores issues of race, ethnicity, gender, sexuality, identity, and representation in science fiction and fantasy across media. The event is supported by the Art Directors Guild.

Hopkinson will be presented the 2018 Eagle-Con Octavia E. Butler Memorial Award on March 8 at 4:30 p.m. in the University-Student Union, Los Angeles Room. The award is given in recognition of impactful contributions to the world of science fiction, fantasy and speculative fiction, with the spirit and conviction demonstrated by multi-award winning author and Cal State LA alumna Octavia E. Butler.

Hopkinson is a critically acclaimed science fiction and fantasy author and creative writing professor at UC Riverside and a member of its faculty research cluster in science fiction.

She has published numerous short stories and six novels, including her first, Brown Girl in the Ring, which won the Warner Aspect First Novel contest. This novel was also the inspiration for a sci-fi feature film, Brown Girl Begins. Throughout her career, Hopkinson has received many awards for her work, including the Campbell and Locus Awards, the World Fantasy Award, the Sunburst Award for Canadian Literature of the Fantastic and the Prix Aurora Award. Hopkinson was born in Jamaica and lived in Jamaica, Guyana, the United States and Trinidad before moving to Canada as a teenager.

As part of the event's culminating program, Coker will receive the 2018 Eagle-Con Prism Award on March 10 at 3 p.m. in Golden Eagle Ballroom 3. The Prism Award is given in recognition of the envisioning and projection of a diverse and representative spectrum of people into the future through artistic media.

Coker is the creator, executive producer and showrunner of Marvel's Luke Cage. Luke Cage was Marvel's first African American superhero with his own TV show. A Stanford graduate, Coker started his career in journalism, writing entertainment profiles for the Los Angeles Times, Rolling Stone, Premiere, Vibe, The Source, XXL, Essence and numerous national publications. He is the author of the book Unbelievable: The Life, Death, and Afterlife of the Notorious B.I.G.

Coker co-wrote 2009's Notorious, and segued into television writing, starting out as an executive story editor on SouthLAnd, where he eventually rose to supervising producer and won an NAACP award for the Season Four episode "God's Work." Coker worked as a supervising producer on CBS' NCIS: Los Angeles and co-executive producer for Fox's Almost Human and Showtime's Ray Donovan. His other feature film credits include 2017's Lowriders and the upcoming Creed 2.

The event will feature a Zombie Crawl, Cosplay Masquerade, Student Film Festival, panel discussions and more. For the complete Eagle-Con schedule, go to its website.

California State University, Los Angeles is the premier comprehensive public university in the heart of Los Angeles. Cal State LA is ranked number one in the United States for the upward mobility of its students. Cal State LA is dedicated to engagement, service, and the public good, offering nationally recognized programs in science, the arts, business, criminal justice, engineering, nursing, education, and the humanities. Founded in 1947, the University serves more than 28,000 students and has more than 245,000 distinguished alumni.

Cal State LA is home to the critically-acclaimed Luckman Fine Arts Complex, Pat Brown Institute for Public Affairs, Hertzberg-Davis Forensic Science Center, Hydrogen Research and Fueling Facility, Billie Jean King Sports Complex and the TV, Film and Media Center. For more information, visit www.CalStateLA.edu.

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