Suzette Haden Elgin
Born in 1936
sfwa.org
Fantasy
Science Fiction
Suzette Haden Elgin was an American science fiction author, linguist, and academic.
She founded the Science Fiction Poetry Association and created the constructed language Láadan for her Native Tongue series.
Elgin earned a Ph.D. in linguistics from UCSD and later taught at SDSU. Her work often explored themes of feminism, linguistics, and nature.
Elgin was a proponent of feminist science fiction, believing it allowed writers to imagine worlds free from real-world constraints on women.
She published both fiction and non-fiction, with her Gentle Art of Verbal Self-Defense series being particularly well-known.
Elgin retired from teaching in 1980.
