Ursula K. Le Guin
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.