The six-week session provided nuts-and-bolts advice on writing and publishing science fiction, and she sold her first two stories while a student there. After the Clarion Workshop, she continued her formal training as a science-fiction writer with classes at UCLA given by Ellison and Theodore Sturgeon. Unmarried, Butler lives in Los Angeles and describes herself as "something of a hermit." Although she doesn't meet regularly with other writers while at home, she attends conventions that bring writers and fans of science fiction together. Though she and Samuel R. Delany are the only prominent black writers of science fiction today, Butler sees a growing black readership of science fiction and anticipates greater participation by blacks as writers and fans of the genre.
Five of Butler's six novels are part of the Patternist saga. Each novel deals with the descendants of Doro, a four-thousand-year-old Nubian who has survived throughout the ages by moving from one human body into another. His own survival is based on his predatory instincts, his capacity to kill not only enemies but all whose deaths can best serve the dynasty he dreams of founding.
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