Award-winning science fiction writer Octavia Butler was born on July 22, 1947, in Pasadena, California.

Butler is the arguably the most popular African-American science fiction writer, earning acclaim for novels such as Kindred and Parable of the Sower. Her stories feature African-American heroines and explore themes on sexual identity and racial conflict within the genre of science fiction. She is the first and only science fiction writer to receive a “genius grant” from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation.

She died in 2006 at age 58.

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(Photo: Chicago Tribune/MCT/Landov)