By Taylor Jasmine | On August 8, 2017 | Updated January 29, 2026 | Comments (0)
Octavia Estelle Butler (1947 – 2006) broke ground in the white male-dominated genre of science fiction as a Black woman. This selection of quotes by Octavia E. Butler reflects her wise and prescient thoughts on writing and human nature.
The New York Times described her as a writer “whose evocative, often troubling novels explore far-reaching issues of race, sex, power, and ultimately, what it meant to be human.”
After publishing some short stories, Butler’s first novel was Patternmaster (1976). It was the first in what would become a four-volume series. Central to these novels are Patternists, people with telepathic powers. But it was Kindred (1979) that put Octavia Butler on the literary map. Read More→
By Nava Atlas | On August 8, 2017 | Updated March 5, 2026 | Comments (1)
Octavia E. Butler (June 22, 1947 – February 24, 2006) was an American author of science fiction as well as dystopian and speculative novels. This visionary Black woman writer blazed a trail in the white male-dominated genre of science fiction.
In her New York Times obituary, she was described as “an internationally acclaimed science fiction writer whose evocative, often troubling novels explore far-reaching issues of race, sex, power, and ultimately, what it meant to be human.” (photo above right courtesy of Wikimedia Commons)
Born in Pasadena, CA, Octavia Estelle Butler’s father died when she was an infant. Raised by her single mother, Butler was a painfully shy child, and always exceedingly tall for her age. She also struggled with dyslexia, which made schoolwork a torture. She began to believe that she was, as she put it, “ugly and stupid, clumsy, and socially hopeless.” Read More→
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