Ursula K. Le Guin

Ursula K. Le Guin (1929-2018) was an American author of science fiction and fantasy, creator of the Earthsea books and the novels The Left Hand of Darkness (1969) and The Dispossessed (1974).

She was born on 21 October 1929 in Berkeley, California, the daughter of the anthropologist Alfred Kroeber and the writer Theodora Kroeber. She studied at Radcliffe College and Columbia University, married the historian Charles Le Guin in Paris in 1953, and settled in Portland, Oregon, in 1959. Her first novel, Rocannon's World, was published by Ace Books in 1966. A Wizard of Earthsea (1968), written after an editor at Parnassus Press asked her for a book for older children, was her first fantasy and won the Boston Globe-Horn Book Award; sequels include The Tombs of Atuan (1971) and The Farthest Shore (1972). The Left Hand of Darkness made her the first woman to win both the Hugo and Nebula awards for best novel, a double she repeated with The Dispossessed.

Across her career she won six Nebula awards, seven Hugo awards by her official site's count (Wikipedia says eight) and a National Book Award, and in 2014 received the National Book Foundation Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters. Her official site counts 23 novels as well as stories, poetry, essays, translations and children's books. She died in Portland on 22 January 2018.

For collectors. Rocannon's World first appeared as half of an Ace Double paperback (G-574), backed with The Kar-Chee Reign. A Wizard of Earthsea was first published by Parnassus Press of Berkeley in 1968, with a colour cover, map and chapter illustrations by Ruth Robbins; it reached Britain in 1971. The Left Hand of Darkness was an Ace paperback original in 1969, with a hardback edition the same year.