Octavia Butler was an American science fiction author and a multiple recipient of the Hugo and Nebula awards. In 1995, Butler became the first science-fiction writer to receive a MacArthur Fellowship. Butler wrote novels that concerned themes of injustice towards African Americans, global warming, women’s rights, and political disparity. Octavia Butler’s death in February 2006 took everyone by surprise. She’d been living in Seattle, where she’d moved in 1999, and died after a fall that some think was possibly the result of a stroke.