Headline to publish out-of-print Octavia E Butler novel Survivor
Headline Publishing Group will publish a new edition of Survivor, the long out-of-print novel by Octavia E Butler, on 1st September 2026, alongside Grand Central Publishing in the US.
Survivor was first published in 1978 as part of Butler’s Patternist series. The publisher said Butler “had critical feelings towards her novel and allowed it to fall out of print”, where it became “a rare collector’s item, available only in pirated or costly first editions”. The new edition will include Butler’s short story A Necessary Being and contextual material from scholar Alyssa Collins, inaugural recipient of the Huntington Library’s Octavia E Butler Fellowship.
The publication has been made in collaboration with the Octavia E Butler Estate and Merrilee Heifetz of Writers House, who represented Butler during her lifetime.
Jules Jackson, managing director of the Octavia E Butler Estate, said: “Together we have revisited the author’s well-known decision to leave Survivor out of print, coming to the joint agreement that to deprive readers of the opportunity to read any of Butler’s works would simply be unjust and unfair. Above all, our work is to keep Butler’s legacy alive, and so it is most crucial to us that this book be published with the proper retrospective context that wrestles with Butler’s decision but allows readers an accessible entry point – and for completists to travel, at last, through her entire oeuvre.”
Frankie Edwards, editorial director at Headline Fiction, said: “We’re incredibly proud to publish the great Octavia E Butler here at Headline. What a writer, what a legacy. It’s a joy and a privilege to see her work continue to resonate so profoundly with readers everywhere today.”
Butler was the author of Kindred (Headline), Wild Seed (Headline) and Parable of the Sower (Headline), and in 1995 became the first science fiction writer to receive the MacArthur Fellowship Genius Grant. New paperback editions of Wild Seed, Mind of My Mind, Clay’s Ark and Patternmaster will also be released on 23rd June 2026.
