As she explained in
The Language of the Night: Essays on Fantasy and Science Fiction (1979), "it seemed to be all about hardware and soldiers." Lord Dunsany's
A Dreamer's Tales (1910), which she encountered at age twelve, was a revelation to her, making her realize that grownups were still creating myths. It opened up to her "the Inner Lands," which she calls "my native country."
Le Guin wrote her first fantasy story at nine, about a man persecuted by evil elves, and submitted her first science fiction, a story about time travel that she wrote when she was ten or eleven, to Amazing Stories. It was rejected, but Amazing Stories was to publish her first science fiction over twenty years later. She received a B.A., Phi Beta Kappa, from Radcliffe in 1951 and an M.A. in French and Italian Renaissance literature from Columbia in 1952. On a Fulbright to France in 1953, she met and married a fellow Fulbrighter, history professor Charles A. Le Guin. She abandoned graduate studies to raise a family: the Le Guins have three children and reside in Portland, Oregon.
Le Guin started writing, according to an introductory note in her short-story collection The Wind's Twelve Quarters (1975), at about age five.
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