In September 2020, 14 years after her death, Octavia Butler finally achieved one of her lifelong goals: to become a bestselling author. “Some might say she was ahead of her time,” says Branden Jacobs-Jenkins. “And I feel like this is the time that she was ahead of.” Jacobs-Jenkins is the showrunner—as well as an executive producer and writer—on Kindred, FX’s new miniseries adaptation of Butler’s 1979 novel of the same name.