12. Octavia E. Butler was dyslexic. Photo Credit: Wikimedia Commons The woman who would become the first science-fiction writer to receive a MacArthur Fellowship and who would win countless awards for her work over a 40-odd year long career struggled with a “mild” case of dyslexia as a child. Octavia E. Butler was raised primarily by her mother and grandmother after the early death of her father. A shy child whose dyslexia made her feel stupid, Butler took to hiding out in the library in her hometown of Pasadena. There, she discovered iconic science fiction magazines that sparked her desire to write. By the age of 12, she was at work on a story that would become the basis of one of her major series. Seventeen years later, her first book, Pattern master, the first of that very series, was published. 38
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