In this galaxy, but in a time and at a conference now somewhat far away, I saw a very long line of women holding books, their faces bright with anticipation. The line snaked between book fair stalls and out the double doors into the conference hall. At the book-signing table at the front of that line, talking intently to one of her devotees, was the writer Ursula LeGuin in her gray cap of hair with signature bangs. That, I thought, is the matriarch of a different kind of sci-fi that includes perhaps the most relevant issue for the women standing in that line: what it means to be female in this and any other imagined world. Her novel The Left Hand of Darkness won both the 1970 Hugo and the Nebula Awards plus introduced the first gender fluid race to better highlight the pervasive cultural biases favoring the masculine among us. We can now call LeGuin a speculative fiction writer as the genre’s defining qualities are books that include supernatural occurrences, futuristic tech, or significant reimagining of history. Only after writing my own feminist speculative book, Yellow, did I truly understand how much I owe to LeGuin and other authors in this matrilineal thread that unwinds and thrives into the present. In chronological order, here are seven that have deeply inspired me to celebrate Women’s History Month: