Octavia E. Butler is getting a street named after her in her adopted hometown, KUOW-FM reports.
Lake Forest Park, Washington, a Seattle suburb, is naming a three-block stretch of 37th Avenue “Octavia Butler Avenue” after the legendary science fiction author who died in 2006.
Butler was born and raised in Pasadena, California, but lived in Lake Forest Park for a period in high school. She moved back to the city in 1999 and resided there until her death. The author, known for novels including Parable of the Sower, Fledgling, and Kindred, won a MacArthur Foundation “genius grant” in 1995, becoming the first science fiction writer to be so honored.
Phillippa Kassover, a member of the Lake Forest Park City Council, told KUOW, “For a smaller city like Lake Forest Park to have had a resident who received a MacArthur Genius award is tremendously exciting. The Black Lives Matter and anti-racism movements helped us understand how important it is to celebrate our African American neighbors of distinction, as they have often been overlooked in the past.”
Butler has received similar honors in the past. In 2018, the International Astronomical Union christened a mountain on a moon of Pluto after the author, and a new bookstore, Octavia’s Bookshelf, opened in Pasadena in February.
Lake Forest Park will dedicate Octavia Butler Avenue at a ceremony on July 29.
Michael Schaub, a journalist and regular contributor to NPR, lives near Austin, Texas.
