There are clues in the Octavia Butler Archives, a collection of 9,062 items filling 386 boxes that was donated to the Huntington Library in San Marino, CA after Butler’s death. How could an intensely shy little girl become a world-renowned, award-winning writer? How could an impoverished and overworked young woman emerge as a powerful prophet of the future? Her shyness combined with slight dyslexia made schoolwork difficult as well.Įstelle’s answer was to turn inward – to her own imagination – and outward, to the Pasadena Central Library, where she would spend countless hours reading fairy tales and horse stories, and later, the fantasy and science-fiction novels that would inspire her to become a writer.ĭespite so much stacked against her, this young woman would eventually become one of the most successful and influential science-fiction writers of her generation, winning multiple Hugo and Nebula awards and in 1995 becoming the first sci-fi writer to receive a MacArthur Fellowship (known as the “Genius Grant”). Painfully shy and introverted from a young age, Estelle became an easy target for bullying at school. Known in her early years as “Estelle,” she was raised by a single, widowed mother who worked domestic jobs to make ends meet. Octavia Estelle Butler was born in 1947 in Pasadena, CA.
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