Her books combine science fiction with social commentaryīutler researched life in the antebellum South for “Kindred’s” story of a black woman in California who goes back to pre-Civil War times to rescue an ancestor, the White son of a plantation owner. crime novel,” said Julia Meltzer, founder and director of Los Angeles arts organization Clockshop. “Her characters are mostly black women or brown people living in a world that is deeply problematic, and it’s a different underbelly than you would get in the typical L.A. In 1995, she became the first science-fiction writer to win a prestigious MacArthur Foundation “genius grant” fellowship.
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She took a series of temporary jobs on factory assembly lines and elsewhere while honing her craft.Īfter the success of “Kindred,” she was able to support herself writing full time and went on to capture top literary accolades.
She went on to study at the Screen Writers Guild Open Door Program and the Clarion Science Fiction Writers’ Workshop, where she found a mentor in science-fiction great Harlan Ellison.
Their attitude was understandable for the era, when few people of color – and even fewer women – pursued careers as writers.īutler prevailed, graduating from Pasadena City College in 1968.
She received little encouragement from her mother or grandmother, who helped raise her after her father died. Writing became a refuge for Butler when she was youngīorn in 1947 to a domestic worker and a man who shined shoes, Butler sought refuge in writing from her isolated existence as a tall, awkward black girl growing up in the 1950s and 1960s. The book is about a contemporary Black writer who finds herself transported back in time to a 19th-century plantation, where she must confront the horrors of slavery. Her fan base continues to grow as a new generation discovers her 12 novels and short stories – most recently her 1979 novel “Kindred,” the basis for a new series streaming on Hulu. Her work helped define the literary cornerstone of Afrofuturism, then an emerging movement that draws from science fiction and fantasy with a socially conscious bend.īy the time she died of a stroke at age 58 in 2006, Butler had amassed international acclaim among fans of speculative fiction, a combination of science fiction, fantasy and horror. Butler, one of few African-American authors to become a prominent name in the white-dominated universe of science fiction.īutler featured people of color in battles for control against aliens and hybrid species, opening a world of possibilities to readers who had been excluded from the genre. Before dystopian fiction like “The Hunger Games” and “Divergent” reflected an increasingly diverse society, there was Octavia E.
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