A Major Loss

Novelist Octavia Butler died in what appears to have been a horrible accident. She was only 58.

Butler, 58, died after falling and striking her head Friday on a walkway outside her home in Lake Forest Park. The reclusive writer, who moved to Seattle in 1999 from her native Southern California, was a giant in stature (she was 6 feet tall by age 15) and in accomplishment.

Ed, who interviewed Butler last Fall, has written a remembrance of her.