Le Guin studied at Berkeley High School. She graduated with another student who became a famous science fiction author, Philip K. Dick. She received her Bachelor of Arts in Renaissance French and Italian literature from Radcliffe College in 1951. She was a member of the Phi Beta Kappa honor society. Le Guin then studied at Columbia University, and earned a Master of Arts in French in 1952. Soon after, she began a Ph.D. program. She won a Fulbright grant to continue her studies in France from 1953 to 1954. Later, Le Guin also received Fulbright grants to travel to London in 1968 and 1975.
In 1953, while traveling to France aboard the "Queen Mary", Ursula met historian Charles Le Guin. Charles was also a Fulbright Scholar. They got married in Paris in December 1953. They returned to the United States in 1954.
Le Guin said that getting married meant she had to stop studying for her doctorate degree. While her husband finished his doctorate at Emory University in Georgia, and later at the University of Idaho, Le Guin taught French and worked as a secretary until the birth of her daughter Elisabeth in 1957. The couple had another daughter, Caroline, and a son, Theodore (born 1964).
In 1959 Charles became a history instructor at Portland State University, so they moved to Portland, Oregon. They lived there for the rest of their lives.
She first wrote in the 1960s. She was awarded many Hugo and Nebula awards. Her agent was Virgina Kidd.
She was given the Gandalf Award in 1979 and the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America Grand Master Award in 2003. She got eighteen Locus Awards, more than any other writer. Her book "The Farthest Shore" won the National Book Award for Children's Books in 1973.
Le Guin was the Professional Guest of Honor at the 1975 World Science Fiction Convention in Melbourne, Australia. She got the Library of Congress "Living Legends" award in the "Writers and Artists" area in April 2000 for her additions to America's cultural history. In 2004, Le Guin was the was given the Association for Library Service to Children's May Hill Arbuthnot Honor Lecture Award.
Le Guin died on January 22, 2018, at her home in Portland. She was 88 years old. Her son said that she had been sick for several months. He said that she probably had a heart attack. There was a private memorial service for her in Portland. There was also a public memorial service in June 2018. At this service, many writers gave speeches, including: Margaret Atwood, Molly Gloss, and Walidah Imarisha
In 1975, Le Guin won a Nebula Award for her story "The Diary of the Rose." She did not accept the award. This was a protest against the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America. The SFWA had recently canceled Stanisław Lem's membership in the group. Le Guin believed they kicked Lem out because he criticized American science fiction and chose to live in the Soviet Union, She said she could not take an award for a story about an unfree society from a writers' group that did not protect freedom.
Le Guin said she was did not learn any religion and was not taught to be religious as a child. But, she became very interested in Taoism and Buddhism. She said that Taoism was a tool to help her understand her life as a teenager and young adult. In 1997 she published a translation of the "Tao Te Ching".
In December 2009, Le Guin quit the Authors Guild. She did this to protest the Guild's agreement with the Google's book digitization project. "You decided to deal with the devil", she wrote in her letter when she quit. She wrote that they had given control over authors' rights and copyright to a company for nothing. Le Guin made a speech at the 2014 National Book Awards. She explained that Amazon's control over the publishing industry was bad and dangerous. She was especially concerned about how Amazon blocked the Hachette Book Group from selling all books because the companies disagreed about how to sell ebooks. The speech was broadcast twice by National Public Radio. And, many other news organizations reported on it around the world.
Le Guin's first published work was in her fictional country called Orsinia. These were a poem and a short story. The poem, "Folksong from the Montayna Province," was published in 1959. The short story was "An die Musik", in 1961. Between 1951 and 1961 she also wrote five novels that all happened in Orsinia. But, publishers did not want them because they thought they were hard to read or understand. Some of her poetry from the 1950s was published in 1975 in a book called "Wild Angels". Le Guin was rejected by many publishers. Then she turned to science fiction because she knew that clearly labeled SF would sell well. Her first professional SF publication was the short story "April in Paris" in 1962 in "Fantastic Science Fiction". Seven more stories followed in the next few years, in "Fantastic" or "Amazing Stories". One of them was "The Dowry of the Angyar", which introduced the fictional Hainish universe, Two more were "The Rule of Names" and "The Word of Unbinding". These introduced the world of Earthsea. Most critics ignored these stories.
Le Guin published her first novel in 1966. It was called "Rocannon's World". Ace Books published it. Two more Hainish novels, "Planet of Exile" and "City of Illusions" were published in 1966 and 1967. These three books became the Hainish trilogy. The first two were each published as half of an "Ace Double": two novels bound into a paperback and sold as a single low-cost volume. "City of Illusions" was published as a standalone volume. Le Guin was getting greater name-recognition. Critics paid more attention to these books than to Le Guin's short stories. Several science fiction magazines reviewed them, but the critical response was still muted. The books had many themes and ideas also present in Le Guin's better known later works, including the "archetypal journey" of a protagonist who undertakes both a physical journey and one of self-discovery, cultural contact and communication, the search for identity, and the reconciliation of opposing forces.
Le Guin's next two books in 1968 and 1969 brought her much more attention and praise. The Wizard of Earthsea in 1968 was a young adult fantasy novel. The Left Hand of Darkness in 1969 started her Hainish universe, explored sexuality, and won awards. These two books changed Le Guin's career and made her a major writer. "A Wizard of Earthsea" and "The Left Hand of Darkness" have been described by critic Harold Bloom as Le Guin's masterpieces.
Le Guin had not planned to write for young adults. But, the editor of Parnassus Press asked her to write a novel for young people. He thought they could sell many books to that group. "A Wizard of Earthsea" published in 1968. It was a fantasy coming of age story for teenagers. In the book, Le Guin created a fictional archipelago called Earthsea. She also created the first wizarding school. Readers and reviewers in the US and the UK liked the book very much.
Her next novel was "The Left Hand of Darkness" in 1969 showed the strength of her writing and won awards. It was in her Hainish universe on a fictional planet where humans have no fixed sex. Le Guin explored experiences of gender and sexuality. The book was Le Guin's first about feminist issues. The book shocked and surprised science fiction critics. It won both the Hugo and the Nebula Awards for best novel. Le Guin the first woman to win these awards.
For the next couple of years in the 1970s, Le Guin continued and extended the work she had started.
Le Guin continued to develop themes of equilibrium and coming-of-age in the next two installments of the "Earthsea" series, "The Tombs of Atuan" and "The Farthest Shore", published in 1971 and 1972, respectively. Both books were praised for their writing, while the exploration of death as a theme in "The Farthest Shore" also drew praise.