James Tiptree, Jr.

“The spirit is willing but the body is weak. She burns out "old". She leaves behind her a body of work no young writer could have conceived, no old writer should have had the energy to shape.”

This is from British critic John Clute in his introduction to "Her Smoke Rose Up Forever," the definitive short story collection by James Tiptree jr., who has always been one of my favorite writers. A debate ensued in the 70's about her possibly being a woman. Several other writers swore she "wrote like a man," but had to eat their words when it was revealed that she was a woman, Alice Sheldon, born in 1915. She spent time as a child in Africa with her parents. After WWll, a Major in the army, she was drafted to help create the CIA. She quit the agency in 1955 after helping form it, and earned a doctorate in Experimental Psychology in 1967. She didn't practice or research; instead she wrote.

I found this:

"On May 19, 1987, she took the life of her invalid husband, then 84, blind and bedridden, and then shot herself in the head. They were found dead, hand in hand in bed, in their Maclean, Virginia home, fulfilling a wish, made in a letter (to writer Robert Silverberg) of 1976, to "take myself off the scene gracefully . . . while I am still me".

Robert Silverberg was one of those who swore that Tiptree was a man.

She wrote science fiction, of course.