Ursula K Le Guin, best-selling fantasy author, dies aged 88
Updated
Best-selling fantasy author Ursula K Le Guin, who won acclaim for the Earthsea series and Left Hand of Darkness, has died at the age of 88.
Her son Theo Downes-Le Guin said she had been in poor health for months.
Born Ursula Kroeber in 1929, she earned a master's degree in romance literature of the Middle Ages and Renaissance from Columbia University in 1952.
While studying in Paris on a Fulbright fellowship, she met and married fellow Fulbright scholar Charles Le Guin.
She wrote novels, children's books and short stories that covered themes of environmentalism, gender, religion, sexuality, and ethnography.
Her 1969 novel The Left Hand of Darkness is recognised as one of the first books of feminist science fiction and is the most famous examination of androgyny in science fiction.
It depicted a world where all individuals have no fixed sex and can become male or female at will during monthly periods of fertility.
Left Hand of Darkness won both the Hugo and Nebula awards in 1970.
In 2016 the New York Times described her as "America's greatest living science fiction writer" although she preferred to be known simply as an "American novelist".
Authors including Salman Rushdie, Neil Gaiman and Iain Banks have credited her as an inspiration.
She won major speculative fiction awards the Hugo Award, Nebula Award, Locus Award and World Fantasy Award, each more than once.
In 2003, she became one of the few women writers to be made a Grandmaster of Science Fiction, a lifetime honour presented annually by the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America.
In 2014 she was awarded the National Book Foundation Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters.
She died at home in Portland, Oregon and is survived by her husband, son, and two daughters.
Topics: arts-and-entertainment, fantasy-books, books-literature, science-fiction-books, united-states
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