Ursula's Life

As the first subject of this blog I will talk about the life of Ursula K. Le Guin and her success as an author. She was born in Berkeley, California in 1929. Her parents, Alfred Kroeber and Theodora Kroeber, were an anthropologist and a writer, respectively, which are who she gets much of her inspiration from. As an adult, she taught many writing courses, such as at Pacific University, Forest Grove (1971), Portland State University, Oregon (1974, 1977, 1979), and the University of Reading, England (1976). She now lives in Portland, Oregon and has had three children.

Her writings consist of poems and prose, and the types include realistic fiction, science fiction, fantasy, young children's books, books for young adults, screenplays, essays, verbal texts for musicians, and voicetexts. Her works often reflect Taoist principle mutuality, interdependence, and ordered wholeness.

She contributed much to literature,  namely to science fiction. At the start of her career, science fiction was considered to be more for middle aged nerds, then for the rest of the population. But, in her works she focused more on the strange human nature, then on the space exploration and battles between humans and aliens. She often depicts the future where people have different beliefs or are different in general, and therefore act quite different, like in The Left Hand of Darkness where all the people are hermaphrodites, and so live quiet different love lives.

She has won many awards for her works including Hugos (1970, 1973, 1974, 1975, 1988) and Gandalf Award (1979), Nebulas (1969, 1974, 1974, 1990, 1995, 2009), Janet Heidinger Kafka Prize for fiction (1986), a Pushcart Prize (1991), a National Book Award (1973) for the novel The Farthest Shore (1972), part of Le Guin's Earthsea trilogy, a Newberry Silver Medal (1972), and Harold D. Vursell Award (1991).

Sources:
http://www.ursulakleguin.com/BiographicalSketch.html
http://www.kirjasto.sci.fi/leguin.htm
http://www.editoreric.com/greatlit/authors/LeGuin.html

Picture Source:
http://www.locusmag.com/2001/Issue09/LeGuin.html