Canadian scholar and editor Kathryn Allan has been selected as the first-ever recipient of the University of Oregon’s Le Guin Feminist Science Fiction Fellowship.

The Center for the Study of Women in Society created the fellowship as part of its 40th anniversary celebration, and as a way of honoring the role UO Libraries Special Collections and University Archives played in the founding of the women’s center.

The fellowship is sponsored by the women’s center, special collections and the Robert D. Clark Honors College.Named for Ursula Le Guin, an American author of novels, children's books and short stories, the award supports travel for the purpose of research on, and work with, the papers of feminist science fiction authors housed in the Knight Library. Authors in this collection include Le Guin, Joanna Russ, Kate Wilhelm, Suzette Haden Elgin, Sally Miller Gearhart, Kate Elliot, Molly Gloss, Laurie Marks, Jessica Salmonson and Damon Knight.

Allan received the award at the keynote event of the 40th anniversary celebration, “A Conversation with Ursula K. Le Guin.” The celebration, presented in collaboration with the Department of Women’s and Gender Studies and ASUO Women’s Center, took place earlier this month in UO’s Erb Memorial Union.

Allan is an independent scholar of feminist science fiction, cyberpunk and disability studies. After completing her Ph.D. thesis, “Bleeding Chrome: Technology and the Vulnerable Body in Feminist Post-Cyberpunk,” she now runs “Academic Editing Canada.”

She is editor of the interdisciplinary collection, “Disability in Science Fiction: Representations of Technology as Cure.” Her writing has appeared in both academic and creative publications, such as “The WisCon Chronicles Vol. 7” and “Outlaw Bodies.”

- by Katherine Cook, UO Office of Strategic Communications intern