Raised by strict Baptists, she wasn't permitted to dance or, later, to wear makeup. Not feeling accepted by those her own age, she was more comfortable with older people. She finds many other writers of science fiction to have been "out kids" who know how it feels not to fit in with groups. Her sympathies lie with such outsiders.
As a student at Pasadena City College and later California State at Los Angeles, she took courses in English, speech, and social sciences--history and anthropology in particular. Unable to major in creative writing, she quit formal work toward a degree but attended evening writing classes at UCLA while working in a variety of jobs, many described by the female narrator of Kindred (in "The Fall"). Her most useful training as a writer she attributes to work with the Writers Guild of America, West, Inc., an organization that established an "open door" program for aspiring writers in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Through this group she met writers Sid Stebel and Harlan Ellison, who provided the early criticism and encouragement she needed. It was Ellison who brought Butler to the Clarion Science Fiction Writer's Workshop in the summer of 1970, where she worked under such well-known writers of science fiction as Joanna Russ, Fritz Leiber, Kate Wilhelm, Damon Knight, and Robin Scott Wilson.
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