His most recent novel, Dark Reflections, which explores the life of a Black, gay poet living in New York’s East Village, is currently nominated for the Lambda Literary Award for best gay male fiction of 2008. Delany’s work was honored this year with the Temple University Faculty Award for Creative Achievement.

Delany’s life in letters began at age 13 when he attempted his first novel. “It was awful,” he said. “One of the chapters was a science report.”

A later attempt, written for poet Marilyn Hacker, whom he married at age 19, was more successful and was published in 1962 when he was just 20. “That novel happened to be science fiction because I read a lot of science fiction,” Delany explained. “I found the science fiction of the time to be more satisfying and more capable of handling big emotional situations. Everyone else was trying to out-Hemingway Hemingway.”

Today, Delany is known for confronting themes like memory, isolation and sexuality, challenging the expectations of his readers and shattering the boundaries of genre.

His work is the subject of several books. At least one academic conference was devoted entirely to his work at the University at Buffalo in 2004, and his work has been featured on many college syllabi in both science fiction and postmodern literature courses. A 1996 article in The Chronicle of Higher Education, “A Cult Following: Scholars find much of interest in the science fiction of Samuel Delany,” is a testament to his position within the academy.

“Frequently compared to Octavia Butler, Samuel Delany is the most important black male science fiction writer in the United States,” noted Shannon Miller, associate professor and chair of the English Department. Butler was one of Delany’s creative writing students in 1973.

“His contribution to the genre of science fiction is probably best illustrated by his 1975 novel Dahlgren, which has been compared to Thomas Pynchon’s work Gravity’s Rainbow,” Miller added.

Delany’s status as a major American writer is also reflected in his numerous awards, which include two Nebula Awards for Best Novel of the Year from the Science Fiction Writers of America (1966 and 1968), a World Science Fiction award, two “Hugo” Awards, and the James Whitehead Memorial Award for a Lifetime’s Contribution to Gay and Lesbian Writing (1993).

He attended the Dalton School in New York City and graduated from the city’s Bronx High School of Science.