Award-Winning writer Octavia E. Butler was born June 22, 1947, in Pasadena, CA., raised by her widowed mother (her father passed when Butler was very young) and grandmother. Although Butler had dyslexia, she still had a growing and voracious appetite for reading that was fed by her mother who would bring back books from homes she worked in, eventually getting a library card for young Octavia. She especially grew fond of science fiction, the genre that she would escape into a world that was all her own.