Canadian Science fiction writer and poet, Phyllis Gotlieb died Tuesday, July 14, 2009 at Mount Sinai Hospital in Toronto, Ontario. She was 83 years old.

Gotlieb's writing career spanned 5 decades. Her first professional publication was the short story "A Grain of Manhood" which appeared in Fantastic in 1959. Her first novel publication was Sunburst, which was released in 1964. She went on to have at least 12 novels published. The most recent was Birthstones in 2007.

She was a founding member of SF Canada, Canada's National Association for Speculative Fiction Professionals. In 1982, Gotlieb's novel, A Judgement of Dragons, won the Prix Aurora Award for best novel. The annual Sunburst Award for Canadian Literature of the Fantastic is named after her first novel.

The funeral will be at Adath Israel Synagogue, 37 Southbourne Avenue, North York, Ontario (suburban Toronto) at 3:30PM on July 16, 2009. Interment will be in the Adath Israel Synagogue Section of Pardes Shalom Cemetery.

Memorial donations may be made to the Phyllis Gotlieb Memorial Fund c/o The Benjamin Foundation, 3429 Bathurst St. Toronto M6A 2C3, 416-780-0324, www.benjamins.ca

Posted July 15, 2009