Books and Novels
Caitlin Bishop’s New Book ‘Kit’s Curly Hair’ is the Heartwarming Tale of a Young Girl Who Learns to Love Her Curly Hair Despite Being Bullied for It in School
A young girl named Kit finds herself being made fun of by her peers at school because of her curly hair. Unable to wear it in braids like her friends or use fun hair clips, Kit tries her best to hide her hair, choosing to hate a part of herself that she has no control over.
Last Updated on July 30, 2024 by Daily News Staff
LEXINGTON, N.C. (Newswire.com) – Fulton Books author Caitlin Bishop, a freshman at Campbell University who enjoys walking her beloved dog Jackie Chan and painting in her free time, has completed her most recent book “Kit’s Curly Hair”: a charming and poignant story about the importance of loving one’s self and embracing what makes one unique and different.
A young girl named Kit finds herself being made fun of by her peers at school because of her curly hair. Unable to wear it in braids like her friends or use fun hair clips, Kit tries her best to hide her hair, choosing to hate a part of herself that she has no control over. Despite this, as she grows older Kit learns not to judge herself based on the mean comments of others, and soon grows to appreciate her curly hair as what sets her apart from the crowd.
Published by Fulton Books, Caitlin Bishop’s book encourages young readers to not give into bullying and allow others to tear down their self-esteem. Rather, Bishop shares her tale to inspire others to learn to love what makes them special, and not hide their uniqueness from the world but to show it off with pride.
Readers who wish to experience this uplifting work can purchase “Kit’s Curly Hair” at bookstores everywhere, or online at the Apple iTunes Store, Amazon, Google Play, or Barnes & Noble.
Source: Fulton Books
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Forgotten Genius Fridays
Octavia E. Butler: The Black Woman Who Helped Change Science Fiction
Discover how Octavia E. Butler transformed science fiction, explored Black identity, and helped shape Afrofuturism through her groundbreaking novels.
Forgotten Genius Friday | The Knowledge | STM Daily News
Octavia E. Butler: The Woman Who Reimagined the Future
When we think about science fiction, we often picture spaceships, robots, alien civilizations, and futuristic technology. But what happens when science fiction becomes a way to explore racism, inequality, human survival, and the consequences of our choices?
That is exactly what Octavia E. Butler brought to the genre.
Long before Afrofuturism became a widely recognized cultural movement, Butler was creating extraordinary stories that placed Black characters—especially Black women—at the center of imagined futures.
Her work challenged conventional ideas about who could be a hero, whose experiences mattered, and what science fiction could accomplish.
A Young Girl With a Powerful Imagination
Octavia Estelle Butler was born on June 22, 1947, in Pasadena, California.
Raised primarily by her mother and grandmother after her father’s death, Butler grew up shy and found comfort in books and storytelling.
Her mother worked as a domestic employee, and Butler sometimes accompanied her to work. Those experiences exposed her to the racial and economic inequalities that would later influence her fiction.
As a child, Butler loved science fiction, but she noticed something missing: people who looked like her.
Rather than accepting that absence, she began creating stories of her own.
She would eventually become one of the most influential writers in speculative fiction.
Breaking Barriers in Science Fiction
During the 1970s, mainstream American science fiction was largely associated with white male writers and protagonists.
Butler entered that literary world with a different perspective.
Her first published novel, Patternmaster, appeared in 1976. It introduced readers to a world shaped by extraordinary mental abilities, social hierarchies, and struggles for power.
Butler continued developing complex stories that explored humanity’s relationship with authority, identity, biology, and survival.
In 1979, she published one of her best-known novels, Kindred.
The book follows Dana, a Black woman living in 1970s California who is repeatedly transported back to a Maryland plantation before the Civil War.
Through Dana’s experiences, Butler forced readers to confront the brutality of American slavery and its continuing influence on the present.
Rather than treating history as something safely confined to the past, Kindred makes that history immediate and deeply personal.
Imagining the Future—and Warning Us About It
In 1993, Butler published Parable of the Sower, a novel set in a collapsing American society struggling with economic inequality, environmental destruction, violence, and weakened institutions.
Its central character, Lauren Olamina, is a young Black woman who develops a philosophy called Earthseed while searching for a way to survive and build a community.
The novel takes place beginning in 2024, making its imagined future particularly striking to modern readers.
Butler followed it with Parable of the Talents in 1998, continuing her examination of social instability, religious extremism, authoritarianism, and the struggle to create a better future.
Her novels were not literal predictions. They were works of speculative fiction that used recognizable social trends to ask difficult questions about where humanity might be headed.
Octavia Butler and Afrofuturism
Afrofuturism brings together African and African diasporic experiences with science fiction, technology, history, mythology, and imaginative visions of the future.
While artists such as Sun Ra and George Clinton explored cosmic identity through music, performance, and futuristic imagery, Butler used literature to investigate power, history, and humanity’s possible futures.
Her novels frequently placed Black women in situations where they had to navigate extraordinary challenges and reshape the societies around them.
Butler’s work is widely discussed within Afrofuturist scholarship, although her literary contributions also extend beyond any single cultural label.
She demonstrated that Black people did not have to remain secondary characters in someone else’s vision of the future.
They could be the architects of entirely new worlds.
Recognition and a Lasting Legacy
Butler received some of science fiction’s most significant honors, including Hugo and Nebula Awards.
In 1995, she became the first science-fiction writer to receive a MacArthur Fellowship, often called a genius grant.
Her work also included the Xenogenesis trilogy, later collected as Lilith’s Brood, which explored humanity’s encounter with an extraterrestrial species and raised questions about consent, adaptation, identity, and survival.
Butler died on February 24, 2006, at age 58.
Yet her influence has continued to grow.
Her novels are studied in classrooms, discussed by scholars, and embraced by new generations of readers and creators interested in science fiction, social justice, and Afrofuturism.
A Genius Who Made Us Think Differently About Tomorrow
Octavia E. Butler was more than a science-fiction author.
She was a visionary storyteller who understood that imagining the future also meant examining the past and questioning the present.
Her stories asked readers to consider how power operates, how communities survive, and how human beings might change.
And perhaps her greatest contribution was demonstrating that the future belongs in the imagination of everyone.
Why Octavia E. Butler Belongs in Forgotten Genius Friday
At STM Daily News, our Forgotten Genius Friday series celebrates extraordinary individuals whose ideas, innovations, and accomplishments helped shape our world, even if their stories aren’t widely known. Octavia E. Butler fits that mission perfectly. Although she received prestigious literary awards and recognition during her lifetime, her influence extends far beyond science fiction. Like the inventors, scientists, and trailblazers we’ve featured in this series, Butler challenged barriers, defied expectations, and opened doors for future generations. Through her imagination, she helped redefine who could tell stories about humanity’s future—and who could be at the center of those stories. Her inclusion in Forgotten Genius Friday reminds us that genius isn’t limited to laboratories and inventions. Sometimes, it begins with a pen, a powerful imagination, and the courage to envision a different world.
Sources and fact-checking
The Huntington Library holds Butler’s literary archive and confirms the chronology of her major novels, awards, and career. The MacArthur Foundation independently documents her 1995 fellowship.
- Official Octavia E. Butler biography
- The Huntington — Octavia E. Butler Papers
- MacArthur Foundation — Octavia Butler
- The Huntington — Telling My Stories exhibition
For more stories about overlooked innovators, writers, scientists, and visionaries who changed our world, explore The Knowledge and Forgotten Genius Friday at STM Daily News.
Last Updated on March 9, 2026 by Daily News Staff
Dennis Wilson Wise, University of Arizona
Think of your favorite fantasy or science fiction novel. You’ll know the author and title, of course. But can you think of its editor or publisher?
In publishing, the people who work behind the scenes rarely get their due. But on Oct. 1, 2024, at least, one industry pioneer got the limelight. On that day, PBS aired “Judy-Lynn del Rey: The Galaxy Gal,” the first episode of its new documentary series “Renegades,” which highlights little-known historical figures with disabilities.
A woman with dwarfism, Judy-Lynn del Rey was best known for founding Del Rey Books, a science fiction and fantasy imprint that turned fantasy in particular into a major publishing category.
As a scholar of fantasy literature, I had the good fortune to serve as research consultant for the PBS project. Due to time constraints, however, the episode could tell only half of del Rey’s story, passing over how she affected science fiction and fantasy themselves.
Judy-Lynn del Rey, you see, had very clear notions on what kind of stories people wanted to buy. For some critics, she also committed the unforgivable sin of being right.
The Mama of ‘Star Wars’
Over the course of her career, del Rey earned a reputation as a superstar editor among her authors. Arthur C. Clarke, who co-wrote the screenplay for “2001: A Space Odyssey,” called her the “most brilliant editor I ever encountered,” and Philip K. Dick said she was the “greatest editor since Maxwell Perkins,” the legendary editor of Ernest Hemingway and F. Scott Fitzgerald.
She got her start, though, working as an editorial assistant – in truth, a “gofer” – for the most lauded science fiction magazine of the 1960s, Galaxy. There she learned the basics of publishing and rose rapidly through the editorial ranks until Ballantine Books lured her away in 1973.
Soon thereafter, Ballantine was acquired by publishing giant Random House, which then named del Rey senior editor. Yet her first big move was a risky one – cutting ties with Ballantine author John Norman, whose highly popular “Gor” novels were widely panned for their misogyny.
Nonetheless, del Rey’s mission was to develop a strong backlist of science fiction novels that could hook new generations of younger readers, not to mention adults. One early success was her “Star Trek Log” series, a sequence of 10 novels based on episodes of “Star Trek: The Animated Series.”
But del Rey landed an even bigger success by snagging the novelization rights to a science fiction film that, at the time, few Hollywood executives believed would do well: “Star Wars.”
This savvy gamble led to years of lucrative tie-in products for Ballantine such as calendars, art books, sketchbooks, the Star Wars Intergalactic Passport and, of course, more novels set in the Star Wars universe – so many different tie-ins, in fact, that del Rey dubbed herself the “Mama of Star Wars.”
Afterward, she became someone who, as reporter Jennifer Crighton put it, radiated “with the shameless glee of one of the Rebel forces, an upstart who won.”
A big player in big fiction
Del Rey’s tendencies as an editor were sometimes criticized – often by competitors who could not match her line’s success – for focusing too much on Ballantine’s bottom line. But she also chose to work within the publishing landscape as it actually existed in the 1970s, rather than the one she only wished existed.
In his book “Big Fiction,” publishing industry scholar Dan Sinykin calls this period the “Conglomerate Era,” a time when publishing houses – usually small and family run – were being consolidated into larger corporations.
One benefit of this shift, however, was greater corporate investment in the industry, which boosted print runs, marketing budgets, author advances and salaries for personnel.
Ballantine’s parent company, Random House, was also known as an industry leader in free speech, thanks to the efforts of legendary CEOs Bennett Cerf and Robert L. Bernstein.
Accordingly, Random House gave their publishing divisions, including Ballantine, immense creative autonomy.
And when del Rey was finally given her own imprint in 1977, she took her biggest risk of all: fantasy.
The Del Rey era
In prior decades, fantasy had a reputation for being unsellable – unless, of course, your name was J.R.R. Tolkien, or you wrote Conan-style barbarian fiction. Whereas the top science fiction magazines often had distinguished runs, fantasy magazines often folded due to lack of sales.
In 1975, though, del Rey hired her husband, Lester del Rey, to develop a fantasy line, and when Del Rey Books launched two years later, it landed major successes with bestsellers such as Terry Brooks’ “The Sword of Shannara” and Stephen R. Donaldson’s “The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant the Unbeliever.” Yet even though Lester edited the fantasy authors, Judy-Lynn oversaw the imprint and the marketing.
One lesser-known example of her prowess is “The Princess Bride.”
Today, most people know the 1987 film, but the movie originated as a much earlier novel by William Goldman. The original 1973 edition, however, sold poorly. It might have faded into obscurity had del Rey not been determined to revive Ballantine’s backlist.
She reissued “The Princess Bride” in 1977 with a dazzling, gate-folded die-cut cover and a new promotional campaign, without which the novel – and the film – might never have found its later success.
Accolades accumulate
Thanks to these efforts, Del Rey Books dominated genre publishing, producing more bestselling titles through 1990 than every other science fiction and fantasy publisher combined. Yet despite complaints that the imprint prioritized commercial success over literary merit, Del Rey authors earned their fair share of literary accolades.
The prestigious Locus Poll Award for best science fiction novel went to Del Rey authors Julian May and Isaac Asimov in 1982 and 1983. Other Locus awardees include Patricia A. McKillip, Robert A. Heinlein, Larry Niven, Marion Zimmer Bradley and Barbara Hambly.
Barry Hughart’s “Bridge of Birds” was one of two winners for the World Fantasy Award in 1985 and won the Mythopoeic Society Award in 1986. Even more impressively, Del Rey ran away with the Science Fiction Book Club Award during that prize’s first nine years of existence, winning seven of them. The imprint’s titles also won three consecutive August Derleth Fantasy Awards – now called the British Fantasy Award – from 1977 through 1979.
Yet despite these accolades, Del Rey’s reputation continued to suffer from its own commercial success. Notably, Judy-Lynn del Rey was never nominated for a Hugo Award for best professional editor while she was alive. When she died in 1986, del Rey was belatedly voted for a posthumous award, but her husband, Lester, refused to accept it, saying that it came too late.
Although the current narrative continues to be that Del Rey Books published mainly formulaic mass-market fiction in its science fiction and fantasy lines, the time may be ripe to celebrate the foresight and iconoclasm of a publisher who expanded speculative fiction beyond the borders of a small genre fandom.
Dennis Wilson Wise, Professor of Practice in English Literature, University of Arizona
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
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Entertainment
TIME100 Next 2025: Celebrating the Emerging Leaders Redefining Tomorrow
TIME Magazine’s TIME100 Next 2025 list highlights 100 rising stars reshaping leadership across various fields. With covers featuring Tate McRae, Jonathan Bailey, and April Koh, the list showcases diverse talents driving significant global change, underscoring a new era of influence.
Last Updated on October 15, 2025 by Daily News Staff
TIME Magazine has unveiled its highly anticipated 2025 TIME100 Next list, spotlighting 100 rising stars who are reshaping industries, challenging conventions, and defining what leadership looks like for the next generation. From groundbreaking entertainers to innovative tech pioneers, this year’s honorees represent a diverse tapestry of talent and vision that’s driving meaningful change across the globe.
Three Faces of the Future
The 2025 TIME100 Next issue features three striking worldwide covers, each showcasing a different dimension of emerging leadership. Singer-songwriter Tate McRae, actor Jonathan Bailey, and Spring Health co-founder and CEO April Koh each represent the breadth of influence this year’s list encompasses—spanning entertainment, business innovation, and mental health advocacy.
TIME100 Next 2025: Celebrating the Emerging Leaders Redefining Tomorrow
“The TIME100 Next spotlights changemakers from around the globe who are shaping the next generation of leadership and redefining what progress, influence, and impact mean in today’s world,” said TIME Chief Executive Officer Jessica Sibley.
A New Generation of Influence
TIME Editor-in-Chief Sam Jacobs emphasized that influence doesn’t wait for seniority. “While we’ve made it our mission to cover people who have reached the pinnacle of their fields, the TIME100 Next is an opportunity to recognize those still on the rise,” Jacobs writes. “We’ve known that true influence knows no age and that it can arrive early in a career.”
This philosophy shines through in the list’s youngest honoree, 16-year-old Elliston Berry, proving that transformative leadership can emerge at any age.
Women Leading the Charge
Over 50 women grace this year’s list, including basketball phenom Paige Bueckers, advocate Sara Ziff, and community organizer Amanda Jones. Their presence underscores a powerful shift toward gender parity in leadership across every sector—from sports and science to activism and the arts.
Star-Studded Tributes
The list features heartfelt tributes from established icons celebrating the next wave of talent. Ariana Grande writes about Jonathan Bailey, Selena Gomez honors Becky G, and Dakota Johnson celebrates Tate McRae. Other contributors include Pedro Pascal, Michael Keaton, Cate Blanchett, Miranda Lambert, and Diana Taurasi—each recognizing the unique spark in their respective honorees.
Entertainment’s Rising Stars
The entertainment category reads like a who’s who of tomorrow’s A-list: Jonathan Bailey, Tate McRae, Gracie Abrams, Damson Idris, GloRilla, Kaitlyn Dever, Lainey Wilson, and David Corenswet are just a handful of the performers redefining music, film, and television for a new era.
Beyond the Spotlight
The list extends far beyond entertainment, recognizing:
- Athletes like soccer sensation Lamine Yamal and tennis player Taylor Fritz
- Political leaders including Karoline Leavitt and Iceland’s Kristrun Frostadottir
- Tech innovators such as Cristóbal Valenzuela and Phoebe Gates
- Health and science pioneers like April Koh and Dr. David Fajgenbaum
- Justice advocates including Emi Mahmoud and Efrén Olivares
- Sustainability champions like Bob Mumgaard and Charles Hua
An Evening to Remember
On October 30th, TIME will host its fifth annual TIME100 Next event in New York City, bringing together this extraordinary group of changemakers. The evening will feature a special performance by Tate McRae, remarks from Jonathan Bailey and Nomzamo Mbatha, and the presentation of the TIME Earth Award to Ayana Elizabeth Johnson.
The event is presented by Rolex and premier partner Toyota, with support from General Catalyst, Project Management Institute, Meta, and The SPARK Collective.
The Future Is Now
What makes the TIME100 Next list so compelling isn’t just the individual achievements of its honorees—it’s the collective vision they represent. These are leaders who refuse to wait their turn, who see problems as opportunities, and who understand that the future doesn’t belong to those who simply inherit it, but to those bold enough to build it.
From Tate McRae’s chart-topping anthems to April Koh’s mental health revolution, from Jonathan Bailey’s captivating performances to the countless innovators working behind the scenes, the 2025 TIME100 Next class reminds us that tomorrow’s leaders are already here—and they’re just getting started.
To explore the full 2025 TIME100 Next list, tributes, videos, and photos, visit TIME’s website.
What emerging leader on this year’s list inspires you most? Share your thoughts in the comments below.
Related Links:
TIME100 Next 2025: Full List and Tributes
View All Three TIME100 Next 2025 Covers
Tate McRae: Rising Pop Star’s Journey to TIME100 Next
Jonathan Bailey: From Bridgerton to Global Stardom
April Koh: Revolutionizing Mental Health with Spring Health
Editor’s Letter: Sam Jacobs on the 2025 TIME100 Next Class
Paige Bueckers: Basketball’s Next Superstar
TIME100 Next Event: October 30, 2025 in NYC
Previous TIME100 Next Lists and Honorees
TIME Earth Award: Recognizing Climate Leadership
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