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Octavia E. Butler signing a book
Photo: Nikolas Coukouma, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 2.5. Cropped portrait.

Meet the author

Octavia E. Butler

Stories that imagine the future—and challenge the present.

Octavia E. Butler explored power, identity, survival, and community through unforgettable speculative fiction. Begin with Kindred, then explore alien encounters in Dawn and the unsettling mysteries of Fledgling.

Books by Octavia E. Butler

Cover of Kindred

Kindred

Octavia E. Butler

Dana, a modern black woman, is celebrating her twenty-sixth birthday with her new husband when she is snatched abruptly from her home in California and transported to the antebellum South. Rufus, the white son of…

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Dana, a modern black woman, is celebrating her twenty-sixth birthday with her new husband when she is snatched abruptly from her home in California and transported to the antebellum South. Rufus, the white son of a plantation owner, is drowning, and Dana has been summoned to save him. Dana is drawn back repeatedly through time to the slave quarters, and each time the stay grows longer, more arduous, and more dangerous until it is uncertain whether or not Dana’s life will end, long before it has a chance to begin.

Cover of Dawn

Dawn

Octavia E. Butler

After a nuclear catastrophe, Lilith Iyapo awakens aboard an alien ship. Offered the chance to help humanity return to Earth, she must confront the unsettling terms of its survival.

Cover of Fledgling

Fledgling

Octavia E. Butler

A girl with no memory discovers that her body and needs conceal an extraordinary identity. As she pieces together her past, she must learn who she can trust in a world shaped by dependence, prejudice,…

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A girl with no memory discovers that her body and needs conceal an extraordinary identity. As she pieces together her past, she must learn who she can trust in a world shaped by dependence, prejudice, and violence.