"I've always felt that it's sort of a requirement that you teach everybody else what you know yourself," Bradley told a reporter in 1997.

Bradley used the anthologies and Marion Zimmer Bradley's Fantasy Magazine, started in 1988, as venues for cultivating unknowns. She also taught workshops, wrote articles on the craft of writing, and published articles on writing by other professionals in her magazine.

Among the careers Bradley helped launch were those of Diana Paxson, Jennifer Roberson, and Mercedes Lackey.

Lackey, author of more than 40 novels herself, made her first professional sales to Bradley with one story in a Darkover anthology and two in different volumes of Sword and Sorceress.

"One way or another she really encouraged my career," Lackey said of Bradley. "Between providing a lot of positive feedback and a steady market for my stories, convincing her agent to take me as one of his clients, and mentioning me favorably to Betsy Wollheim at DAW Books, I think she's in no small part responsible for where I am today. She's shoved a lot of us into professional careers."

Though she is well known and appreciated for her writing, the head start she gave to other writers may have been Bradley's greatest gift to the world of science fiction and fantasy.