![]() ![]() ![]() In 2005, she wrote her last book, Fledgling. During her last years, Butler faced writer’s block and was depressed. Butler had planned to write four more Parable novels, but unfortunately, she could not do so. In 1995, she became the first sci-fi author to be awarded a McArthur Fellowship and received prize money of $295,000. One of her novels, The Parable of the Talents, won the Nebula Award for Best Science Novel. After a year, her collection of short stories called Bloodchild won Butler the Hugo Award, the Locus Award, and the Science Fiction Chronicle Reader Award for Best Novelette.ĭuring the 1990s, Octavia Butler established herself as a successful science fiction writer. In 1984, she rose to prominence with her sci-fi short story, Speech Sounds, and won a Hugo award. In 1978, Butler was finally able to quit her temporary jobs and only focus on writing. For the next five years, she worked on a series of novels. During a workshop, her writing impressed one of the teachers who encouraged Butler to attend another six-week seminar. Butler would wake up at two or three in the morning to write. She worked as a telemarketer, a dishwasher, and a potato chip inspector, among others. Early struggles and Butler’s careerĮven though Octavia’s mother wanted her to become a secretary, Butler worked several jobs to make ends meet. In college, she won a short-story contest and received $15, her first income as a writer. When her aunt told her that she couldn’t be a writer, Butler refused to give up her desire to publish a story. At 12, she watched a telefilm and came to the conclusion that she could write a better story. At the age of 10, Butler begged her mother to buy her a typewriter. She began to read books by sci-fi authors like John Brunner and Theodore Sturgeon. But eventually, Butler started showing curiosity in science fiction magazines. Initially, she loved reading fairy tales and horse stories. She also wrote in her “big pink notebook”. To avoid all the bullying, Bulter spent her time reading at the Pasadena Central Library. The bullying led her to believe that she was “ugly and stupid, clumsy, and socially hopeless”. Her shyness and dyslexia made Butler an easy target for bullies at school. From a very young age, Octavia was extremely shy, due to which she couldn’t socialize with other kids. The employers treated her mother very poorly. Her mother worked as a cleaner and Butler would accompany her to work, where the duo entered white people’s houses through back doors. Growing up, her mother and maternal grandmother raised Butler. At the age of eleven, her father passed away. Octavia Estelle Butler was born in Pasadena, California. She went on to become one of the most successful and popular sci-fi authors of all time. Despite several years of rejection and failures, Butler refused to give up. In 1995, she became the first science-fiction writer to receive a MacArthur Fellowship. These awards recognize the best science fiction and fantasy works published in the United States. She is the recipient of several Hugo and Nebula awards. Butler was an American science fiction author. ![]()
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