Q 01/05

In which California city was Ursula Kroeber born in 1929?

A) Pasadena

B) San Francisco

C) Berkeley

D) Sacramento

Answer · why

C) Berkeley

Her father Alfred Kroeber was an anthropologist at the University of California there, and the family summered in Napa Valley.

Q 02/05

Le Guin's mother Theodora Kroeber wrote a 1961 biography of which man, the last known Yahi?

A) Geronimo

B) Ishi

C) Sequoyah

D) Chief Joseph

Answer · why

B) Ishi

Elements of his story have been traced in Planet of Exile, City of Illusions and The Word for World Is Forest.

Q 03/05

Which famous physicist, a visitor to the Kroeber home, was Le Guin's model for Shevek in The Dispossessed?

A) Robert Oppenheimer

B) Albert Einstein

C) Richard Feynman

D) Enrico Fermi

Answer · why

A) Robert Oppenheimer

Shevek is a physicist from the anarchist moon Anarres who travels to the wealthy planet Urras.

Q 04/05

How old was Le Guin when she submitted her first short story to Astounding Science Fiction?

A) 11

B) 9

C) 16

D) 21

Answer · why

A) 11

It was rejected, and she did not submit anything else for another ten years.

Q 05/05

Le Guin took her bachelor's degree in Renaissance French and Italian literature from which college?

A) Vassar

B) Smith

C) Bryn Mawr

D) Radcliffe

Answer · why

D) Radcliffe

She went on to a master's in French at Columbia and a Fulbright to France, where she met her husband.