In the early 1950s, there was a quiet, little girl who found solace watching sci-fi movies. One day, this girl watched the B-movie space movie “Devil Girl From Mars” (1954) and thought, “I can write better!” She never looked back from her writing journey after that fateful day. That little girl was Octavia E. Butler (1947-2006). During her lifetime, she won numerous awards including the PEN West Lifetime Achievement Award, the Hugo Award for Best Short Story, and the Nebula Award for Best Novelette. You can pick up many of her books from GCPL today. Here’s a quick list of Butler’s titles we have on the shelves:

1. “Kindred” (1979)

2. “Parable of the Sower” (1993)

3. “Parable of the Talents” (1998)

4. “Bloodchild and Other Stories” (1995)

5. “Fledgling” (2005)

Interested in more Black female sci-fi authors? GCPL has titles from N.K. Jemisin, Tomi Adeyemi, Nnedi Okorafor, and Nalo Hopkinson. Check out to your heart’s content today!

🖋: Written by Alexandria Ducksworth, Library Associate, Buford Branch. 

📷: Photo of Octavia Estelle Butler signing a copy of Fledgling after speaking and answering questions from the audience. Released under the Creative Commons “Attribution Share-Alike” 2.5 License by Nikolas Coukouma.