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Ursula K. Le Guin

American fantasy and science fiction author (1929–2018)

  • Fame69.7
  • Momentum0.0
  • Wikipedia99.6K
Source-basedFalling
Lived 1929–2018, aged 89United States
United States flagUnited StatesWritersWriter / Author
  • Wikipedia
    83 languages
    Cross-language footprint
  • Era
    1929–2018
    Aged 89
  • Known for
    Tales from Earthsea
    2006
Summary
Updated 2026-06-08

She bent science fiction until it asked the questions literature is supposed to ask — about gender, power, what we owe each other, whether a perfect society can exist if it requires one child's suffering. The Earthsea books and The Left Hand of Darkness made her the first woman to win both the Hugo and Nebula for best novel.

Biography

About

Born in Berkeley in 1929 to two anthropologists, Ursula Kroeber earned a master's in French, started a doctorate, then dropped it after marrying historian Charles Le Guin in 1953. She began writing full-time in the late 1950s, publishing her first work in 1959. A Wizard of Earthsea arrived in 1968 with dark-skinned protagonists in a genre that rarely imagined them; The Left Hand of Darkness followed in 1969, winning her both major awards and making her the first woman to do so. Over nearly sixty years she wrote more than twenty novels and a hundred short stories, always pulling from anthropolo…

Voice

In their own words

Sourced, dated quotes from Ursula K. Le Guin

Ursula K. Le Guin
said
Sometimes one’s very angry and preaches, but I know that to clinch a point is to close it.
— "The magician" by Maya Jaggi in The Guardian (17 December 2005)
Ursula K. Le Guin
said
All of us have to learn how to invent our lives, make them up, imagine them. We need to be taught these skills; we need guides to show us how.
— The Operating Instructions in The Wave in the Mind: Talks and Essays on the Writer, the Reader, and the Imagination (2004)
Ursula K. Le Guin
said
To think that realistic fiction is by definition superior to imaginative fiction is to think imitation is superior to invention.
— The Question I Get Asked Most Often in The Wave in the Mind: Talks and Essays on the Writer, the Reader, and the Imagination (2004)
Ursula K. Le Guin
said
What's to gain by silence?
— Cannoc, in Gifts (2004)
Ursula K. Le Guin
said
My imagination makes me human and makes me a fool; it gives me all the world, and exiles me from it.
— "The Creatures on My Mind" in Unlocking the Air and Other Stories (1996), p. 65
via Wikiquote · CC BY-SA
By the numbers

Score breakdown

The six component signals behind the Fame score, and their ranks across the leaderboards.

Fame
Falling
69.7
Composite of search demand, mentions, audience & graph footprint.
Score components
Historical27.6
Now attention5.5
Source confidence80.0
Completeness90.0
Global rank
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Country rank
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Category rank
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Receipts

Sources

  • Wikipedia
    wikipedia · en.wikipedia.org
    High confidence
  • Wikidata
    wikidata · wikidata.org
    High confidence
  • Pantheon 2.0
    database · pantheon.world
    High confidence