The Museum of Pop Culture's Science Fiction and Fantasy Hall of Fame honors science fiction and fantasy’s leading creators and most impactful creations. To align with our annual Write Out of This World competition, and to coincide with the conclusion of voting for our next Science Fiction and Fantasy Hall of Fame class, we are sharing content featuring some of science fiction and fantasy’s most celebrated storytellers.

Born in New York City in 1937, Joanna Russ was a celebrated science fiction author, queer advocate, critic, and feminist scholar. Writing, and thriving, as an out lesbian in a male dominated field, Russ used fiction to challenge mainstream sexist representations of women in literature. A local Seattleite for a number of years (she was a professor of English at the University of Washington from 1977-1991), she won numerous awards for her stories of female protagonists that had agency and where men didn’t always have all the fun and adventure. Russ was inducted to MoPOP's Science Fiction and Fantasy Hall of Fame in 2013.

This galley proof of her seminal book The Female Man (1975) was used for preliminary editing and bears Russ' notations to her editor.

Recommended Joanna Russ Works:

• The Female Man (1975)
• To Write Like a Woman: Essays in Feminism and Science Fiction (1980)

More POP+ Write Out of This World Oral Histories:

• Octavia E. Butler
• George R.R. Martin
• Nalo Hopkinson
• Samuel R. Delany

Learn more about MoPOP's 'Write Out of This World: Science Fiction and Fantasy Short Story and Comic Contest' + for contests, the latest news, and behind-the-scenes content, be sure to follow MoPOP on YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter.

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