Butler: Telling My Stories, a new exhibition of the pioneering author’s papers, reflects upon the meaning and urgency of these materials today.īutler’s works, though they may have been written 20 or 30 years ago, are incredibly contemporary and relevant.
Here, Natalie Russell, assistant curator of literary collections at the Huntington Library in Pasadena and curator of Octavia E. It just turned out that it was called science fiction.” Butler herself did extraordinary things, and the story of her method of self-motivation and perseverance in the face of challenging odds, of her productivity, and of her excellence at creating worlds that reveal, and at times redress, truths about our own, is beautifully told through her archive. She was also the first African American woman to gain recognition in the genre, though one of her more famous statements on the topic of her contribution to that particular field, uttered during more than one interview, is “I write about people who do extraordinary things. Butler was the first science fiction writer to receive a prestigious MacArthur Fellowship. Butler (1947-2006) inside the cover of a notebook in 1988-one of the manifestations the author jotted across her sketchpads and rough drafts, artifacts now housed in the collections of the Huntington Library in Pasadena, CA. Habit is persistence in practice.”īelow we have the essential Octavia Butler books to introduce you to the acclaimed author.So wrote Octavia E. Habit will help you finish and polish your stories. Habit will sustain you whether you're inspired or not. “First forget inspiration," she wrote in her short story collection, Bloodchild and Other Stories. In 2019, the Los Angeles Public Library named its studio space the Octavia Lab in her honor. And despite dying unexpectedly of a stroke at age 58 in 2006, her legacy still lives on.
In a literary genre dominated by white men, Butler published 15 novels and short story collections in her lifetime, received a MacArthur genius grant, and earned two Nebula and two Hugo awards, both esteemed recognitions in publishing. The groundbreaking sci-fi and speculative fiction author was a master of spinning imaginative tales that introduced you to both the possibilities-and dangers-of the human race, all while offering lessons on tribalism, race, gender, and sexuality. If we're talking must-read authors like Maya Angelou, James Baldwin, and Toni Morrison, the one-and-only Octavia Butler needs be a part of the conversation.
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