In a career spanning nearly six decades, Ursula K. Le Guin’s imagination changed the landscape of science fiction and fantasy storytelling. Born into a scholarly family in Berkeley, California, in 1929, Le Guin had early writing aspirations, submitting stories to magazines before she was even a teenager. She didn’t start her writing career in earnest until the late 1950s; by the late 1960s, she found critical and commercial success with novels such as A Wizard of Earthsea (1968) and The Left Hand of Darkness (1969).

The Earthsea series, written across six books published between 1969 and 2001, follows the journey of a young wizard named Ged, an early forerunner to modern fantasy heroes such as Harry Potter. In The Left Hand of Darkness, Le Guin compassionately explored gender and identity in ways not done before. Her prolific output — more than 60 books, including novels, short stories, essays, and more — thoughtfully and presciently tackled topics such as capitalism, colonialism, and anarchism. Her work was nothing short of groundbreaking, and throughout her career it won her numerous prestigious awards including the Living Legend medal from the Library of Congress in 2000. She died in 2018 at the age of 88.