Ursula K. Le Guin was an American novelist and writer of speculative fiction, working across science fiction and fantasy in the latter half of the twentieth century and into the twenty-first.

Born in Berkeley, California, on October 21, 1929, Le Guin spent her life as a citizen of the United States and died in Portland, Oregon, on January 22, 2018. Over the course of her career she published more than twenty novels and over a hundred short stories, a body of work that placed her among the most productive writers in her field. Her fiction earned recognition at the highest levels of her genre: she received the Hugo Award for Best Novel, the Nebula Award for Best Novel, and the Locus Award for Best Collection, honors that reflected the sustained quality of her output across decades.

Le Guin's work was not confined to long fiction. She was also a poet, a translator, and a musician, and she wrote in English throughout her career. These multiple creative modes shaped a practice that moved fluidly between narrative, verse, and other forms of expression. Speculative fiction — the broad territory where science fiction and fantasy meet and sometimes blur — remained the recurring terrain of her imagination, and it is within that literature that her novels and short stories continue to be read.