For the love of science…fiction

All of us are born with a gift, sometimes life challenges make sharing those gifts difficult. Octavia E. Butler began writing at the age of 10, a shy, awkward, slightly dyslexic, African-American diving into the world of science fiction. Octavia’s style of writing focused on marginalized characters and communities often exposing the underside of humanity while giving hope for the future. Octavia received multiple Hugo and Nebula awards, and became the first science fiction writer to receive the MacArthur Fellowship. Butler once described herself as a “47-year-old writer who can remember being a 10-year-old writer and who expects someday to be an 80-year-old writer. I am also comfortably asocial—a hermit…. A pessimist if I’m not careful, a feminist, a Black, a former Baptist, an oil-and-water combination of ambition, laziness, insecurity, certainty, and drive.”
Contributed by: Amee Bahr