This weekend The Huntington opens the first major exhibition on the life of award-winning author Octavia E. Butler. For those who do not know of her, Ms. Butler was the first science fiction writer to receive a prestigious MacArthur “genius†award and the first African American woman to win widespread recognition writing in that genre.
I am not particularly an aficionado of sci-fi, but she was a master story-teller and to those of us pursuing the ‘creative’ or ‘narrative’ nonfiction path, stellar story-telling is the holy grail.
Ms. Butler’s literary archive resides at The Huntington and included among her manuscripts and drafts are what I might call ‘notes to self,’ including the one above, and this affirmation shown below – don’t knock the power of positive thinking!
