Acclaimed science-fiction writer and feminist Ursula Kroeber Le Guin (1929-) was born on this day in Berkeley, California. Her father was a noted Native American anthropologist, her mother, a writer.

"As soon as I learned how to write I began making poems and stories," she said of her academically-stimulating childhood.

Creativity and storytelling were vital to her upbringing. She once said: "Minds that don't change are like clams that don't open."

With writing that celebrated strong-willed characters, fantasy, and suspense, she published her first story, April in Paris, in 1962. Her first novel, Rocannon's World, was published four years later and became the first in her Hainish series--books based in the unique galactic federation, Ekumen.

"It takes a lot of work to create a universe," Le Guin observed, "Ask God."

With literary magic, Le Guin has masterfully put words together, creating a universe of imagination and light. In the award-winning novel, The Farthest Shore (1972), she explored freedom, truth, death, and life with protagonist Ged, the goat herder.

She said, "Story is change…relating, finding, losing, bearing, discovering, (or) parting."

The prolific writer has published over 80 short stories, two collections of essays, several children's books, volumes of poetry, and novels. Le Guin said, "Sure, it's simple writing for kids. Just as simple as bringing them up."

"We are volcanoes. When we women offer our experience as our truth, as human truth, all the maps change. There are new mountains," she said.

Keep reinventing your love.