Her papers are held in the research collection of the Huntington Library. Butler died of a stroke at the age of 58. Now collected for the first time in one volume, these four novels take readers on a wondrous odyssey from a mythic, primordial past to a fantastic far future. Butler established the themes of identity and transformation that echo throughout her distinguished career.

She also taught writer's workshops, and eventually relocated to Washington state. In her classic Patternist series, multiple Hugo and Nebula award-winner Octavia E. Her books and short stories drew the favorable attention of the public and awards judges. She soon sold her first stories and by the late 1970s had become sufficiently successful as an author that she was able to pursue writing full-time. She attended community college during the Black Power movement, and while participating in a local writer's workshop was encouraged to attend the Clarion Workshop, which focused on science fiction. She began writing science fiction as a teenager. Extremely shy as a child, Octavia found an outlet at the library reading fantasy, and in writing.

In 1995, she became the first science fiction writer to receive the MacArthur Foundation 'Genius' Grant.Īfter her father died, Butler was raised by her widowed mother. Octavia Estelle Butler was an American science fiction writer, one of the best-known among the few African-American women in the field.