SAMUEL R. DELANY Biography - Writers

 
 

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SAMUEL R. DELANY

Delany was born and raised in Harlem and attended the Dalton School and Bronx         
High School of Science. Delany and the poet Marilyn Hacker, who met in high           
school, were married for several years and have a daughter.                           
                                                                                       
Delany was a published science fiction author by the age of 20, and published         
six well-regarded science fiction novels between 1962 and 1968, as well as             
several prize-winning short stories (collected in Driftglass). Dhalgren was           
published in 1974. His main literary project through the late 1970s and 1980s         
was the Neveryon series.                                                               
                                                                                       
Delany has published several autobiographical/semi-autobiographical accounts of       
his life as a black and gay writer, including his Hugo Award winning                   
autobiography, The Motion of Light in Water.                                           
                                                                                       
In recent years, Delany has been teaching English, Comparative Literature, and         
writing. Delany spent 11 years teaching at the University of Massachusetts at         
Amherst, a year and a half at the University at Buffalo, The State University of       
New York|University at Buffalo, and moved to the English Department of Temple         
University in 2001. He has also published several books of criticism, interviews,     
and other essays.                                                                     
                                                                                       
                                                                                       
                                                                                       
Most of his works deal more explicitly with sexual themes than is common.             
Dhalgren and Stars in My Pocket Like Grains of Sand include several sexually           
explicit passages, and several of his books such as Equinox, The Mad Man, Hogg         
and Phallos could even be considered pornography, a term that Delany himself has       
endorsed before. He has published several books of literary criticism, with an         
emphasis on issues in science fiction and other paraliterary genres, comparative       
literature, and queer studies.