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Sources:
http://www.advocate.com/news_detail_ektid26237.asp
http://www.washblade.com/thelatest/thelatest.cfm?blog_id=5396
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Octavia_Butler
Octavia E. Butler
(1947-2006)
Octavia E. Butler was a nationally recognized lesbian science fiction writer. Further, Butler was also considered to be the very first Black woman to gain national prominence in the United States for writing in the white-male dominated genre of science fiction.
Butler's work wasn't preoccupied with robots and ray guns, according to long time friend, Leslie Howle. Instead Butler used the genre's artistic freedom to explore race, poverty, politics, religion, and human nature. "She stands alone for what she did," Howle said. "She was such a beacon and a light in that way."
Jane Jewell, executive director of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America, said Butler was one of the first Black women to explore the genre and the most prominent. But Butler would have been a major writer of science fiction regardless of race or gender, she said. "She is a world-class science fiction writer in her own right," Jewell said. "She was one of the first and one of the best to discuss gender and race in science fiction."
Butler was born and raised in Pasadena, California. Her father Laurice, was a shoeshiner who died when she was a baby. Butler was raised by her grandmother and her mother (also named Octavia) who worked as a maid to support their family in the struggling, racially mixed neighborhood in which they lived.
According to the Norton Anthology of African American Literature, Butler was "an introspective only child in a strict Baptist household" and "was drawn early to magazines such as Amazing, Fantasy and Science Fiction, and Galaxy and soon began reading all the science fiction classics".
Octavia Jr., also known as "Junie", was considered shy and a "daydreamer" and was later diagnosed as dyslexic. She began writing at age 10 as she embraced science fiction after seeing a schlocky B-movie called Devil Girl From Mars. She thought to herself, "I can write a better story than that."
In 1970 she took a bus from her hometown of Pasadena, Calif., to attend a fantasy writers workshop in East Lansing, Mich. Her first novel, Kindred, in 1979, featured a Black woman who travels back in time to the U.S. South to save a white man. She went on to write about a dozen books, plus numerous essays and short stories. Her most recent work, Fledgling, an examination of the Dracula legend, was published in fall 2005.
She also received many awards through the years. In 1995 Butler was the first science fiction writer granted a "genius" award from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, which paid $295,000 over five years. Butler described herself as a happy hermit, and never married. "Mostly she just loved sitting down and writing," said Seattle-based science fiction writer Greg Bear.
He added that "For being a Black female growing up in Los Angeles in the '60s, she [Octavia]was attracted to science fiction for the same reasons I was: It liberated her. She had a far-ranging imagination, and she was a treasure in our community." (Gene Johnson, via AP)
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