About the Author

Octavia Estelle Butler was a visionary writer of science fiction. As one of the first African American and female science fiction writers, Butler wrote novels that concerned themes of racial conflict, climate change, sexual and gender identity, women's rights, and political disparity.

Butler won the genre's highest honors: Nebula, Hugo, Locus Award for Best Novelette, a PEN Lifetime Achievement Award, and the City College of New York's Langston Hughes Medal in 2005. Additionally, in 1995 she was awarded the prestigious MacArthur "Genius" Grant -the only science fiction writer to receive this award.

In The New York Times, she was described as having laid the groundwork for the Afrofuturist movement before the term even existed.

June 22, 1947 - Feb 24, 2006