Octavia E. Butler Mined Her Boundless Curiosity To Forge A New Vision For Humanity
In 2021, Alyssa Collins was awarded a yearlong Octavia E. Butler Fellowship from The Huntington Library, Art Museum, and Botanical Gardens in San Marino, California.
Butler, whose papers are held at the Huntington, was the first science fiction writer to be awarded a MacArthur Genius Grant. A pioneering writer in a genre long dominated by white men, her work explored power structures, shifting definitions of humanity and alternative societies.
In an interview, which has been edited for length and clarity, Collins explains how Butler’s boundless curiosity inspired the author’s work, and how Butler’s experiences as a Black woman drew her to “humans who must deal with the edges or ends of humanity.”
Butler, who died in 2006, would have turned 75 years old on June 22, 2022.
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