Octavia Estelle Butler was born in Pasadena, California, in 1947. Her father died unexpectedly when she was seven, and she was raised by her mother and grandmother. Perhaps because she was painfully shy as a child, she turned to writing and fostered a love of science fiction at an early age. In an interview, she noted, “I made up my own stories to put myself in them” while simultaneously enjoying writing because it “allow[s] you to be other people without being locked up for it” (Gross, Terry, and John Powers. “Pioneering Writer Octavia Butler on Writing Black People and Women Into Sci-Fi.” NPR, 14 Dec. 2022).

Eventually, Butler became widely recognized for her work, becoming the first science fiction writer to receive a MacArthur “Genius” Award. During her life, she also received several Hugo and Nebula Awards, which are prestigious science fiction writing awards. However, for a few decades, Butler struggled to find an audience for her work, possibly because of the themes she wrote about and the dystopian settings she created but also potentially because of her identity as a Black woman writing in a genre typically associated with white men.