09 Feb 2021

Octavia Butler

Black Authors post, Day 9.

Black Authors post, Day 9.

Today’s author is one of my favorite authors of all time, science fiction author Octavia Butler.

Octavia Butler was born in California in 1947. Her father died when she was 7 years old, and she was raised by her mother and grandmother. Because she was extremely shy and bullied by other children, she took solace in reading science fiction magazines at the Pasadena Central Library. She also wrote her own science fiction stories, begging her mother for a typewriter so she could write her stories.

Butler received an Associate of Arts degree in 1968 from Pasadena Community College, and also attended California State University in Los Angeles and the University of California, Los Angeles.

After college, she participated in the Open Door Workshop of the Writers Guild of America West, a program designed to mentor minority writers. There, she met her mentor, Harlan Ellison, who convinced her to participate in the Clarion Science Fiction Workshop (where she met her friend and past subject Samuel Delaney). Her first published short story was “Crossover”, published in the 1971 Clarion anthology. Her first novel, Patternmaster, was published in 1976.

Butler won her first Hugo award in 1984 for her story “Speech Sounds”. In 1985, her novelette Bloodchild won the Hugo Award and the Locus Award. In 1995 she became the first science fiction writer to win a MacArthur fellowship. In 1999, her novel The Parable of the Talents won the Nebula Award.

Black Authors post, Day 9.

Today’s author is one of my favorite authors of all time, science fiction author Octavia Butler.

Octavia Butler was born in California in 1947. Her father died when she was 7 years old, and she was raised by her mother and grandmother. Because she was extremely shy and bullied by other children, she took solace in reading science fiction magazines at the Pasadena Central Library. She also wrote her own science fiction stories, begging her mother for a typewriter so she could write her stories.

Butler received an Associate of Arts degree in 1968 from Pasadena Community College, and also attended California State University in Los Angeles and the University of California, Los Angeles.

After college, she participated in the Open Door Workshop of the Writers Guild of America West, a program designed to mentor minority writers. There, she met her mentor, Harlan Ellison, who convinced her to participate in the Clarion Science Fiction Workshop (where she met her friend and past subject Samuel Delaney). Her first published short story was “Crossover”, published in the 1971 Clarion anthology. Her first novel, Patternmaster, was published in 1976.

Butler won her first Hugo award in 1984 for her story “Speech Sounds”. In 1985, her novelette Bloodchild won the Hugo Award and the Locus Award. In 1995 she became the first science fiction writer to win a MacArthur fellowship. In 1999, her novel The Parable of the Talents won the Nebula Award.

She died in 2005, at the age of 58.

Two memorial scholarships in her honor, one from the Carl Brandon Society and one from Pasadena City College, support three of her life’s goals that she handwrote in a notebook in 1988:

“I will send poor black youngsters to Clarion or other writer’s workshops
I will help poor black youngsters broaden their horizons
I will help poor black youngsters go to college”

Some of my favorite works by Octavia Butler include:

A note: These Amazon links point to Amazon Smile, Amazon’s affiliate charity program. If you have not set up Amazon Smile, I encourage you to point it to an organization like Face to Face, an organization that serves young people experiencing homeless or at risk of becoming homeless in Ramsey County. They provide housing support, medical care, mental healthcare, case management, and other social services to youth age 11 to 24.

Some links:

Image: “Butler signing a copy of the Fledgling in October 2005” Released under the Creative Commons “Attribution Share-Alike” 2.5 License by Nikolas Coukouma