To introduce readers to her full body of work, the articles in this section provide both a biographical overview of Octavia Butler as well as articles that provide comprehensive coverage of her novels. Her sudden death prompted an outpouring of commemorative works, essays, conferences, and organizations to acknowledge and preserve her legacy as the first black woman science fiction writer who so powerfully set about challenging our notions of difference, hierarchy, power, and the complexities of being human.Īlthough Butler began writing and publishing science fiction in 1971, scholarly attention to her work did not begin to gain traction until the early 1980s. Butler died in 2006 at the age of 58 after slipping outside her Lake Forest Park, Washington, home and suffering a traumatic head injury. She would later become a teacher at Clarion. Ellison ultimately encouraged her to attend the Clarion Science Fiction Writers Workshop, where she was the student of renowned black science fiction writer Samuel R. She also took courses at California State University at Los Angeles and a few night courses at UCLA, where she was taught by Harlan Ellison. She began writing as a young girl, and attended college at Pasadena City College, where she earned her Associate’s degree.

Painfully shy as a youth and notoriously private as an adult, Butler’s self-penned biographical sketch-that she is “a pessimist if I’m not careful, a feminist, a Black, a quiet egoist, a former Baptist”-remained remarkably consistent throughout her career as her acclaim grew. The Carl Brandon Society, a community of scholars and writers devoted to the study and advancement of black science fiction, established a scholarship in her honor. In 2005, she was awarded the Langston Hughes Medal that recognizes influential and engaging African American writers, and, in 2010, she was inducted into the Science Fiction Hall of Fame. In October 2000, Butler received the PEN Lifetime Achievement Award for writing. MacArthur Foundation, also known as the MacArthur Genius Award, for her groundbreaking work in science fiction. She also won the Locus award for “Bloodchild.” In 1995, Butler was awarded a MacArthur Fellowship from the John D. award for Clay’s Ark (1984), a Nebula for “Bloodchild” and Parable of the Talents and a Hugo for “Speech Sounds” (1984) and “Bloodchild” (1985). She won several of the top awards for fiction writing in science fiction, including a James Tiptree Jr. She published her first short story, “Crossover,” in 1971 and went on to publish twelve novels and nine short stories over the course of her thirty-five-year career. Butler died of a stroke at the age of 58.Born on 22 June 1947 Octavia Estelle Butler is the first self-identified black female author of science fiction in the United States. She also taught writer's workshops, and eventually relocated to Washington state. Her books and short stories drew the favorable attention of the public and awards judges. She soon sold her first stories and by the late 1970s had become sufficiently successful as an author that she was able to pursue writing full-time. She attended community college during the Black Power movement, and while participating in a local writer's workshop was encouraged to attend the Clarion Workshop, which focused on science fiction.

She began writing science fiction as a teenager.

Extremely shy as a child, Octavia found an outlet at the library reading fantasy, and in writing. After her father died, she was raised by her widowed mother.

A multiple recipient of both the Hugo and Nebula awards, she became in 1995 the first science-fiction writer to receive a MacArthur Fellowship.īutler was born in Pasadena, California. Octavia Estelle Butler (J– February 24, 2006) was an American science fiction author. Genres: Alternate History, Dystopia, Post-Apocalyptic, Genetic Engineering.

Octavia e butler first award