I don't love LeGuin. I would rank McCaffrey and MZB above her too, though I also don't love McCaffrey. My favorite female fantasy/SF writer (and possibly favorite fantasy writer full stop, though there's competition) is Sharon Shinn. Octavia E. Butler would compete, but she's pretty much all SF.

I would rank McCaffrey and MZB above her too,

No fucking way! McCaffrey is a massive hack.

In my opinion MZB and and McCaffrey are talented hacks. I don't regard most of their work as quality, although much of it is entertaining. I think of Le Guin as thoughtful and wordsmith, and I'd apply neither of those words to Anne and Marion. Not that I'm a connoisseur, or anything.

Octavia Butler is also high on my thoughtful and wordsmithy list. She wrote a fair amount of fantasy--Kindred, the Patternist series (right?), Fledgling...

I liked MZB's Fantasy Magazine. I think I prefer her as an editor over as a writer.

In my opinion MZB and and McCaffrey are talented hacks.

MZB and McCaffrey were good at pleasing readers with entertaining, wish-fulfillment-type of stories. Even MZB's overtly feminist work was very wish-fulfillment.

Which is not to say that The Dispossessed isn't wish-fulfillment, too, but it's a hell of a lot more thoughtful. And LeGuin's prose is much better. She's got more going on thematically than either MZB or McCaffrey, even in her earliest work.

Or, basically, what ita ! says.

Patricia McKillip is probably my favorite fantasy female writer. The Forgotten Beasts of Eld rocks hard.

The Forgotten Beasts of Eld rocks hard.

It really does. After reading The Last Unicorn I was desperately searching for something else that would scratch that itch, and that's the only book that came close. Though, of course, it has its own distinct flavor and should not simply be compared to Beagle's masterpiece.

For MZB, I only like the Darkover novels. Some of her SF books are on my worst books ever list. McCaffrey is just not a very good writer, although she had a compelling premise in the Pern novels.

Please don't dismiss all of David's list. Fafryd and the Grey Mouser and The Dying Earth are not to be missed.

My two favorite living authors are Bujold and Connie Willis.

In some ways, LeGuin can be an awkward writer and she sometimes whacks the reader on the head with the message, but what she accomplished in The Lathe of Heaven and The Left Hand of Darkness is amazing. "The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas" says brilliantly what I believe most strongly about society.

Actually I don't think The Dispossed IS wish fulfillment.

I don't know if you notice, but the anarchist utopia is actually pretty repressive. The hero is rebelling against anarchist authoritarianism as much as he opposes capitalism and soviet style socialism. Le Guin was lovingly exploring ideas. And I think the results of her exploration was "I love these ideas, but I don't really think they will work." So very much the opposite of wish fulfillment.

I agree with McAffery as a hack. But I always found Carrol complete uninteresting. Also the Fafherd and Grey Mouser series - always thought Leiber came up with these wonderful exotic setting and two colorful characters and never really figured out what to do with them. Half the time I'd read a Fafherd and Grey Mouser story and think, "Ok this is really going to connect with me any minute now" only it never did.

Tanith Lee - the Flat Earth series, especially the early ones. She fell in love with Azhrarn because I guess she really goes for beautiful cruel ruthless bastards, at least in fiction. "Night's Master', the first in the series, shows how really good a book can be when the author is in love with her own creation. In some of the later books, I think that love led Lee to make choices that were not ideal for the story, though I think they all are worth reading. And in all fairness some of the things I would have thought she could never work, she pulled off beautifully.

I feel like I've read "The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas". The title sounds incredibly familiar.

I have heard good things about "The Left Hand of Darkness", so I might give that one a try someday.