She also got the 'germ of the idea' for what would become her novel Kindred. As a freshman at PCC, she won a college-wide short-story contest, earning her first income ($15) as a writer. Īfter graduating from John Muir High School in 1965, Butler worked during the day and attended Pasadena City College (PCC) at night. Negroes can't be writers.' But Butler persevered in her desire to publish a story, and even asked her junior high school science teacher, William Pfaff, to type the first manuscript she submitted to a science fiction magazine. Happily ignorant of the obstacles that a black female writer could encounter, she became unsure of herself for the first time at the age of 13, when her well-intentioned aunt Hazel said: 'Honey. She drafted what would later become the basis for her Patternist novels. Butler: Telling My Stories.' Īt the age of 10, Butler begged her mother to buy her a Remington typewriter, on which she 'pecked stories two fingered.' At 12, she watched the telefilm Devil Girl from Mars (1954) and concluded that she could write a better story. Why aren't there more SF Black writers? There aren't because there aren't. Her mother was treated poorly by her employers. She accompanied her mother to her cleaning work where, as workers, the two entered white people's houses through back doors.

Growing up in Pasadena, Butler experienced limited cultural and ethnic diversity in the midst of de facto racial segregation in the surrounding area. She was raised by her mother and maternal grandmother in what she would later recall as a strict Baptist environment. Octavia Estelle Butler was born in Pasadena, California, the only child of Octavia Margaret Guy, a housemaid, and Laurice James Butler, a shoeshiner. Her papers are held in the research collection of the Huntington Library in Southern California. Butler died of a stroke at the age of 58. She also taught writer's workshops, and eventually relocated to Washington. Her books and short stories drew the favorable attention of the public, and awards soon followed. She soon sold her first stories and by the late 1970s had become sufficiently successful as an author to be able to write full-time. While participating in a local writer's workshop, she was encouraged to attend the Clarion Workshop, then held in Pennsylvania, which focused on science fiction. She attended community college during the Black Power movement. She began writing science fiction as a teenager. Extremely shy as a child, Butler found an outlet at the library reading fantasy, and in writing. īorn in Pasadena, California, Butler was raised by her widowed mother. In 1995, Butler became the first science-fiction writer to receive a MacArthur Fellowship. Octavia Estelle Butler (J– February 24, 2006) was an American science fiction author and a multiple recipient of the Hugo and Nebula awards. Michael Schaub, a journalist and regular contributor to NPR, lives near Austin, Texas.Butler signing a copy of Fledgling in 2005 Lake Forest Park will dedicate Octavia Butler Avenue at a ceremony on July 29. In 2018, the International Astronomical Union christened a mountain on a moon of Pluto after the author, and a new bookstore, Octavia’s Bookshelf, opened in Pasadena in February. The Black Lives Matter and anti-racism movements helped us understand how important it is to celebrate our African American neighbors of distinction, as they have often been overlooked in the past.”īutler has received similar honors in the past. Phillippa Kassover, a member of the Lake Forest Park City Council, told KUOW, “For a smaller city like Lake Forest Park to have had a resident who received a MacArthur Genius award is tremendously exciting.

The author, known for novels including Parable of the Sower, Fledgling, and Kindred, won a MacArthur Foundation “genius grant” in 1995, becoming the first science fiction writer to be so honored. She moved back to the city in 1999 and resided there until her death.

Lake Forest Park, Washington, a Seattle suburb, is naming a three-block stretch of 37th Avenue “Octavia Butler Avenue” after the legendary science fiction author who died in 2006.īutler was born and raised in Pasadena, California, but lived in Lake Forest Park for a period in high school.

Butler is getting a street named after her in her adopted hometown, KUOW-FM reports.

Octavia e butler