Ursula K Le Guin

Ursula K Le Guin (born October 21, 1929, Ursula Kroeber Le Guin ) is an American author. She has written novels, poetry, children's books and essays, and is best known for her science fiction, fantasy novels and short stories.

First published in the 1960s, she is now regarded as one of the best modern science fiction and fantasy authors, noted for her exemplary style and for her exploration of Taoist, anarchist, feminist, psychological and sociological themes. She has received several Hugo and Nebula awards, and was awarded the Gandalf Grand Master award in 1979 and the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America Grand Master Award in 2003.

Ursula K Le Guin was born and raised in Berkeley, California, the daughter of the anthropologist Alfred L. Kroeber and the writer Theodora Kroeber. She became interested in literature when she was very young. At the age of eleven she submitted her first story to the magazine Astounding Science Fiction (it was rejected).

She received her B.A. (Phi Beta Kappa) from Radcliffe College in 1951, and M.A. from Columbia University in 1952. She later studied in France, where she met her husband, historian Charles Le Guin. They were married in 1953.

Her earliest writings (little was published at the time, but some was published in adapted form much later in Orsinian Tales and Malafrena), were non-fantastic stories of imaginary countries. Searching for a publishable way to express her interests, she returned to her early interest in science fiction and began to be published regularly in the early 1960s. She became famous after the publication of her 1969 novel The Left Hand of Darkness, which won the Hugo and Nebula awards.

Ursula K Le Guin has lived in Portland, Oregon since 1958. She has three children and three grandchildren.

Selected Bibliography

Series

• Earthsea Cycle
  • Earthsea (1977) [O]
  • Tales from Earthsea (2001)
  • 1 A Wizard of Earthsea (1968)
  • 2 The Tombs of Atuan (1971)
  • 3 The Farthest Shore (1972)
  • 4 Tehanu: The Last Book of Earthsea (1990)

• Gifts
  • Gifts (2004)
  • Voices (2006)

• Hainish
  • Planet of Exile (1966)
  • Rocannon's World (1966)
  • City of Illusions (1967)
  • The Left Hand of Darkness (1969)
    • Magazine/Anthology Appearances:
    • The Left Hand of Darkness (Excerpt) (1979)
  • The Dispossessed: An Ambiguous Utopia (1974)
  • Three Hainish Novels (1978)
  • Worlds of Exile and Illusion (1996)

• Orsinia
  • 1 Orsinian Tales (1976)
  • 2 Malafrena (1979)

Novels

• The Lathe of Heaven (1971)
  • Magazine/Anthology Appearances:
  • The Lathe of Heaven (Part 1 of 2) (1971)
  • The Lathe of Heaven (Part 2 of 2) (1971)
• The Word for World Is Forest (1972)
• Very Far Away From Anywhere Else (1976)
• The Eye of the Heron (1978)
  • Magazine/Anthology Appearances:
  • The Eye of the Heron (Complete Novel) (1979)
• The Beginning Place (1980)
• Always Coming Home (1985)
• Threshold (1986)
• Fish Soup (1992)
• Jane on Her Own (1999)
• The Telling (2000)
• The Other Wind (2001)
• Changing Planes (2004)

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