Biography Essay

Ursula K. Le Guin is a writer of great versatility and power, acclaimed for her science fiction, fantasy, and children's literature. All her fiction is distinguished by careful craftsmanship, a limpid prose style, realistic detail in the creation of imaginary worlds, profound ethical concerns, and mythical reverberations created through the use of symbolic and archetypal patterns. Her typical story involves a hero's quest for maturity and psychological integration, and her major theme is the need for balance and wholeness. Her goal in writing is to show her readers themselves and their lives at a distance, the better to create orderly patterns out of random information.

Ursula K. Le Guin was born in Berkeley, California, in 1929, the youngest of four children and the only daughter of Alfred and Theodora Kroeber. Her father was a renowned professor of anthropology, an expert on California Indians; her mother was an...