Samuel Delany

Author

b. April 1, 1942

“Science fiction isn’t just thinking about the world out there. It’s also thinking about how that world might be.”

Samuel “Chip” Delany is a renowned author, literary critic and professor, best known for his science fiction writing. First published at age 20, he has written more than two dozen books. His most celebrated novels include “Babel-17,” “Nova,” “Return to Neveryon,” and “Dhalgren,” which sold more than a million copies.

Delany has won four Nebula Awards, two Hugo Awards and a Stonewall Book Award. Among many other honors, he was inducted into the Science Fiction and Fantasy Hall of Fame, and in 2013 the Science Fiction Writers of America named him its 30th Grand Master.

Delany was born and raised in Harlem. His aunts, Sadie and Bessie Delany, were civil rights pioneers who inspired characters in his collection of semiautobiographical novellas, “Atlantis: Three Tales.” Henry Beard Delany, his grandfather, was the first black bishop of the Episcopal Church.
In 1961 Delany married Marilyn Hacker, a poet and lesbian. The couple had a daughter before separating in 1975.

Winner of the William Whitehead Memorial Award for his lifetime contribution to gay and lesbian literature, Delany has written several memoirs, including “Times Square Red, Times Square Blue,” which examines the subculture of New York’s adult movie theaters. In “The Motion of Light and Water,” he describes his life as an openly gay science fiction writer; in it he writes, “I was a homosexual who now knew he could function heterosexually.” In “Bread and Wine: An Erotic Tale of New York City,” he famously documents his intimate relationship with a homeless book vendor.

Though he does not have a college degree, Delany was a professor of English and creative writing at Temple University for 14 years; he retired in 2015. He taught previously at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst for more than a decade.