She had a great voice and brought a lot of insight. My friend Alfred Utton introduced me to her some years ago when he was completing his Literary Criticism capstone class. I hate to know that such a unique talent won’t be inspiring us any longer. At 58, she died far too soon. I got the news from Broadsheet on Salon but followed scifi.com’s reference to the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America, Inc. site:

http://www.sfwa.org/news/2006/obutler.htm

If you haven’t read Parable of the Talents, now is a good time:

http://www.tatteredcover.com/NASApp/store/Product;jsessionid=aBoBxA3sw_K6?s=showproduct&isbn=0446675784

or:

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0446675784/sr=8-1/qid=1141073638/ref=pd_bbs_1/104-6390233-3776714?%5Fencoding=UTF8