Press Release - Exhibition on Octavia E. Butler to Explore Life and Work of Celebrated Science Fiction Author

“Octavia E. Butler: Telling My Stories” On view April 8–Aug. 7, 2017
Huntington Library, Art Collections, and Botanical Gardens
Library, West Hall

Press Preview: Fri., April 7, 10 a.m. - noon

SAN MARINO, Calif.—A new exhibition opening this spring at The Huntington Library, Art Collections, and Botanical Gardens examines the life and work of celebrated author Octavia E. Butler (1947–2006), the first science fiction writer to receive a prestigious MacArthur “genius” award and the first African-American woman to win widespread recognition writing in that genre. “Octavia E. Butler: Telling My Stories” opens April 8, 2017, in the West Hall of the Library and continues through Aug. 7. Butler’s literary archive resides at The Huntington.

“She was a pioneer—a master storyteller who brought her voice, the voice of a woman of color, to science fiction,” said Natalie Russell, assistant curator of literary manuscripts at The Huntington and curator of the exhibition. “Tired of stories featuring white, male heroes, she developed an alternative narrative from a very personal point of view.”

A Pasadena, Calif., native, Butler told the New York Times in a 2000 interview: "When I began writing science fiction, when I began reading, heck, I wasn't in any of this stuff I read. The only black people you found were occasional characters or characters who were so feeble-witted that they couldn't manage anything, anyway. I wrote myself in, since I'm me and I'm here and I'm writing."

Butler would have been 70 in 2017; she died an untimely death at age 58, apparently of a stroke at her home in Seattle.

“Octavia E. Butler: Telling My Stories” follows a roughly chronological thread and includes approximately 100 items that reveal the writer’s early years and influences, as well as highlight specific themes that repeatedly commanded her attention.

After Butler’s death, The Huntington became the recipient of her papers, which arrived in 2008 in two four-drawer file cabinets and 35 large cartons. “She kept nearly everything,” said Russell, “from her very first short stories, written at age 12, to book contracts and programs from speaking engagements. The body of materials includes 8,000 individual items and more than 80 boxes of additional items: extensive drafts, notes, and research materials for more than a dozen novels, numerous shorts stories and essays, as well as correspondence and other materials. By the time the collection had been processed and catalogued, more than 40 scholars were asking to get access to it. In the past two years, it has been used nearly 1,300 times—or roughly 15 times per week, said Russell, making it one of the most actively researched archives at The Huntington.

Butler was born June 22, 1947, to a maid and a shoeshine man. Her father died when she was quite young; an only child, she was raised primarily by her mother. “She discovered writing very early, in large part because, she said, it suited her shy nature, and it was permitted in her strict Baptist household,” said Russell. The exhibition will feature samples of her first stories.