Octavia Butler was the author of more than 15 books. If you’ve ever wanted to read more of her work, this is Alex Luppens-Dale’s guide to the best Octavia Butler books and a look at her life and legacy… Support our news coverage by subscribing to our Kindle Nation Daily Digest. Joining is free right now!
Who is Octavia Butler?
A native of Pasadena, California, Butler was an only child who was raised mostly by her mother and grandmother. Her father died when she was 7 years old. She spent much of her time as a child on jobs with her mother, who worked as a housekeeper, and reading books at the Pasadena Central Library.
She attended Pasadena City College and the Clarion Workshop. After graduating from college, she would continue to work temp jobs while getting up at 2:00 or 3:00 in the morning to write. She was eventually able to leave these jobs behind to write full time. In 1995, she became the first science fiction writer to win a McArthur Fellowship. In 2000, she received a Lifetime Achievement Award in Writing from the PEN American Center.
Huntington Library, which has her papers in their research collection, published an image of one of her notebooks that periodically resurfaces on Twitter. In the notebook, Butler declared that “This is my life. I write bestselling novels. My novels go onto the bestseller lists on or shortly after publication. […] So be it! See to it!” and that “My books will be read by millions of people!”
Her vision more than came true. She also expressed a wish to help poor black students get an education and to travel whenever and wherever she wanted. Today, the Octavia E. Butler Memorial Scholarship provides Clarion Writers’ Workshop scholarships for young writers of color. There is also a scholarship in her name at her alma mater, Pasadena City College.
Butler died in 2006 at the age of 58, having written her own dreams into existence.
Butler’s legacy lives on in so many ways. In addition to her immortal body of work and the scholarships that have been established in her name, there is also an asteroid named after her. In 2019, the Los Angeles Public Library opened the Octavia Lab, a maker space named in Butler’s honor.
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