Marion Zimmer Bradley

Marion Eleanor Zimmer Bradley was an American author of fantasy, historical fantasy, science fiction and science fantasy novels, born on 3 June 1930 and dead on 25 September 1999 at Alta Bates Medical Center in Berkeley, four days after a heart attack. She is best known for the Arthurian novel The Mists of Avalon and the Darkover series, and was noted for a female perspective in her writing that had been little seen before in sword and sorcery fantasy. She began writing at seventeen, graduated with a Bachelor of Arts degree from Hardin-Simmons University, co-founded the Society for Creative Anachronism in 1966 and edited the long-running Sword and Sorceress anthology series. She was posthumously awarded the World Fantasy Award for lifetime achievement in 2000. Her reputation was marred after 2014 when her daughter reported that Bradley had sexually abused her and allegedly assisted her second husband, the convicted child abuser Walter Breen, in abusing other children.