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Ursula K. Le Guin

February 17, 2023

Ursula Kroeber Le Guin (/ˈkroʊbər lə ˈɡwɪn/ KROH-bər lə GWIN;[1] October 21, 1929 – January 22, 2018) was an American author best known for her works of speculative fiction, including science fiction works set in her Hainish universe, and the Earthsea fantasy series. She was first published in 1959, and her literary career spanned nearly sixty years, producing more than twenty novels and over a hundred short stories, in addition to poetry, literary criticism, translations, and children's books. Frequently described as an author of science fiction, Le Guin has also been called a "major voice in American Letters".[2] Le Guin said she would prefer to be known as an "American novelist".[3]

Ursula K. Le Guin
Le Guin in 1995
BornUrsula Kroeber
(1929-10-21)October 21, 1929
Berkeley, California, U.S.
DiedJanuary 22, 2018(2018-01-22) (aged 88)
Portland, Oregon, U.S.
OccupationAuthor
Education
Periodc. 1959 – 2018
Genre
Notable works
Spouse
Charles Le Guin
​
(m. 1953)​
Parents
RelativesKarl Kroeber (brother)
Website
www.ursulakleguin.com

Le Guin was born in Berkeley, California, to author Theodora Kroeber and anthropologist Alfred Louis Kroeber. Having earned a master's degree in French, Le Guin began doctoral studies but abandoned these after her marriage in 1953 to historian Charles Le Guin. She began writing full-time in the late 1950s and achieved major critical and commercial success with A Wizard of Earthsea (1968) and The Left Hand of Darkness (1969), which have been described by Harold Bloom as her masterpieces.[4] For the latter volume, Le Guin won both the Hugo and Nebula awards for best novel, becoming the first woman to do so. Several more works set in Earthsea or the Hainish universe followed; others included books set in the fictional country of Orsinia, several works for children, and many anthologies.

Cultural anthropology, Taoism, feminism, and the writings of Carl Jung all had a strong influence on Le Guin's work. Many of her stories used anthropologists or cultural observers as protagonists, and Taoist ideas about balance and equilibrium have been identified in several writings. Le Guin often subverted typical speculative fiction tropes, such as through her use of dark-skinned protagonists in Earthsea, and also used unusual stylistic or structural devices in books such as the experimental work Always Coming Home (1985). Social and political themes, including race, gender, sexuality, and coming of age were prominent in her writing. She explored alternative political structures in many stories, such as in the philosophical short story "The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas" (1973) and the anarchist utopian novel The Dispossessed (1974).

Le Guin's writing was enormously influential in the field of speculative fiction, and has been the subject of intense critical attention. She received numerous accolades, including eight Hugos, six Nebulas, and twenty-two Locus Awards, and in 2003 became the second woman honored as a Grand Master of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America. The U.S. Library of Congress named her a Living Legend in 2000, and in 2014, she won the National Book Foundation Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters. Le Guin influenced many other authors, including Booker Prize winner Salman Rushdie, David Mitchell, Neil Gaiman, and Iain Banks. After her death in 2018, critic John Clute wrote that Le Guin had "presided over American science fiction for nearly half a century",[5] while author Michael Chabon referred to her as the "greatest American writer of her generation".[6][7]

Life

Childhood and education

 
Ursula's father, Alfred Kroeber, with Ishi, the last of the Yahi people (1911)

Ursula K. Le Guin was born Ursula Kroeber in Berkeley, California, on October 21, 1929. Her father, Alfred Louis Kroeber, was an anthropologist at the University of California, Berkeley.[8][9] Le Guin's mother, Theodora Kroeber (born Theodora Covel Kracaw), had a graduate degree in psychology, but turned to writing in her sixties, developing a successful career as an author. Among her works was Ishi in Two Worlds (1961), a biographical volume about Ishi, an Indigenous American who became the last known member of the Yahi tribe after the rest of its members were killed by white colonizers.[8][10][11]

Le Guin had three older brothers: Karl, who became a literary scholar, Theodore, and Clifton.[12][13] The family had a large book collection, and the siblings all became interested in reading while they were young.[12] The Kroeber family had a number of visitors, including well-known academics such as Robert Oppenheimer; Le Guin would later use Oppenheimer as the model for Shevek, the physicist protagonist of The Dispossessed.[10][12] The family divided its time between a summer home in the Napa Valley, and a house in Berkeley during the academic year.[10]

Le Guin's reading included science fiction and fantasy: she and her siblings frequently read issues of Thrilling Wonder Stories and Astounding Science Fiction. She was fond of myths and legends, particularly Norse mythology, and of Native American legends that her father would narrate. Other authors she enjoyed were Lord Dunsany and Lewis Padgett.[12] Le Guin also developed an early interest in writing; she wrote a short story when she was nine, and submitted her first short story to Astounding Science Fiction when she was eleven. The piece was rejected, and she did not submit anything else for another ten years.[4][14][15]

Le Guin attended Berkeley High School.[16] She received her Bachelor of Arts degree in Renaissance French and Italian literature from Radcliffe College of Harvard University in 1951, and graduated as a member of the Phi Beta Kappa honor society.[17] As a child she had been interested in biology and poetry, but had been limited in her choice of career by her difficulties with mathematics.[17] Le Guin undertook graduate studies at Columbia University, and earned a Master of Arts degree in French in 1952.[18] Soon after, she began working towards a PhD, and won a Fulbright grant to continue her studies in France from 1953 to 1954.[10][18]

Married life and death

In 1953, while traveling to France aboard the Queen Mary, Ursula met historian Charles Le Guin.[18] They married in Paris in December 1953.[19] According to Le Guin, the marriage signaled the "end of the doctorate" for her.[18] While her husband finished his doctorate at Emory University in Georgia, and later at the University of Idaho, Le Guin taught French and worked as a secretary until the birth of her daughter Elisabeth in 1957.[19] A second daughter, Caroline, was born in 1959.[20] Also in that year, Charles became an instructor in history at Portland State University, and the couple moved to Portland, Oregon, where their son Theodore was born in 1964.[18] They would live in Portland for the rest of their lives,[21] although Le Guin received further Fulbright grants to travel to London in 1968 and 1975.[10]

Le Guin's writing career began in the late 1950s, but the time she spent caring for her children constrained her writing schedule.[18] She would continue writing and publishing for nearly 60 years.[21] She also worked as an editor, and taught undergraduate classes. She served on the editorial boards of the journals Paradoxa and Science Fiction Studies, in addition to writing literary criticism herself.[22] She taught courses at Tulane University, Bennington College, and Stanford University, among others.[21][23] In May 1983 she delivered a commencement speech entitled "A Left-handed Commencement Address" at Mills College in Oakland, California.[24] It is listed as No. 82 in American Rhetoric's Top 100 Speeches of the 20th Century,[25] and was included in her nonfiction collection Dancing at the Edge of the World.[26]

Le Guin died on January 22, 2018, at her home in Portland, at the age of 88. Her son said that she had been in poor health for several months, and stated that it was likely she had had a heart attack. Private memorial services for her were held in Portland.[9][27] A public memorial service, which included speeches by the writers Margaret Atwood, Molly Gloss, and Walidah Imarisha, was held in Portland on June 13, 2018.[28][29]

Views and advocacy

Further information: Authors Guild, Inc. v. Google, Inc.

I think hard times are coming when we will be wanting the voices of writers who can see alternatives to how we live now and can see through our fear-stricken society and its obsessive technologies. We will need writers who can remember freedom. Poets, visionaries – the realists of a larger reality.

—Ursula K. Le Guin[30]

Le Guin refused a Nebula Award for her story "The Diary of the Rose" in 1977, in protest at the Science Fiction Writers of America's revocation of Stanisław Lem's membership. Le Guin attributed the revocation to Lem's criticism of American science fiction and willingness to live in the Eastern Bloc, and said she felt reluctant to receive an award "for a story about political intolerance from a group that had just displayed political intolerance".[31][32]

Le Guin once said she was "raised as irreligious as a jackrabbit". She expressed a deep interest in Taoism and Buddhism, saying that Taoism gave her a "handle on how to look at life" during her adolescent years.[33] In 1997, she published a translation of the Tao Te Ching.[33][34]

In December 2009, Le Guin resigned from the Authors Guild in protest over its endorsement of Google's book digitization project. "You decided to deal with the devil", she wrote in her resignation letter. "There are principles involved, above all the whole concept of copyright; and these you have seen fit to abandon to a corporation, on their terms, without a struggle."[35][36] In a speech at the 2014 National Book Awards, Le Guin criticized Amazon and the control it exerted over the publishing industry, specifically referencing Amazon's treatment of the Hachette Book Group during a dispute over ebook publication. Her speech received widespread media attention within and outside the US, and was broadcast twice by National Public Radio.[30][37][38]

Chronology of writings

Early work

Le Guin's first published work was the poem "Folksong from the Montayna Province" in 1959, while her first published short story was "An die Musik", in 1961; both were set in her fictional country of Orsinia.[39][40] Between 1951 and 1961 she also wrote five novels, all set in Orsinia, which were rejected by publishers on the grounds that they were inaccessible. Some of her poetry from this period was published in 1975 in the volume Wild Angels.[41] Le Guin turned her attention to science fiction after a lengthy period of receiving rejections from publishers, knowing that there was a market for writing that could be readily classified as such.[42] Her first professional publication was the short story "April in Paris" in 1962 in Fantastic Science Fiction,[43] and seven other stories followed in the next few years, in Fantastic or Amazing Stories.[44] Among them were "The Dowry of Angyar", which introduced the fictional Hainish universe,[45] and "The Rule of Names" and "The Word of Unbinding", which introduced the world of Earthsea.[46] These stories were largely ignored by critics.[42]

Ace Books released Rocannon's World, Le Guin's first published novel, in 1966. Two more Hainish novels, Planet of Exile and City of Illusions were published in 1966 and 1967, respectively, and the three books together would come to be known as the Hainish trilogy.[47] The first two were each published as half of an "Ace Double": two novels bound into a paperback and sold as a single low-cost volume.[47] City of Illusions was published as a standalone volume, indicating Le Guin's growing name recognition. These books received more critical attention than Le Guin's short stories, with reviews being published in several science fiction magazines, but the critical response was still muted.[47] The books contained many themes and ideas also present in Le Guin's better known later works, including the "archetypal journey" of a protagonist who undertakes both a physical journey and one of self-discovery, cultural contact and communication, the search for identity, and the reconciliation of opposing forces.[48]

When publishing her story "Nine Lives" in 1968, Playboy magazine asked Le Guin whether they could run the story without her full first name, to which Le Guin agreed: the story was published under the name "U. K. Le Guin". She later wrote that it was the first and only time she had experienced prejudice against her as a woman writer from an editor or publisher, and reflected that "it seemed so silly, so grotesque, that I failed to see that it was also important." In subsequent printings, the story was published under her full name.[49]

Critical attention

Le Guin's next two books brought her sudden and widespread critical acclaim. A Wizard of Earthsea, published in 1968, was a fantasy novel written initially for teenagers.[4] Le Guin had not planned to write for young adults, but was asked to write a novel targeted at this group by the editor of Parnassus Press, who saw it as a market with great potential.[50][51] A coming of age story set in the fictional archipelago of Earthsea, the book received a positive reception in both the U.S. and Britain.[50][52]

 
Le Guin with Harlan Ellison at Westercon in Portland, Oregon (1984)

Her next novel, The Left Hand of Darkness, was a Hainish universe story exploring themes of gender and sexuality on a fictional planet where humans have no fixed sex.[53] The book was Le Guin's first to address feminist issues,[54] and according to scholar Donna White, it "stunned the science fiction critics"; it won both the Hugo and the Nebula Awards for best novel, making Le Guin the first woman to win these awards, and a number of other accolades.[55][56] A Wizard of Earthsea and The Left Hand of Darkness have been described by critic Harold Bloom as Le Guin's masterpieces.[4] She won the Hugo Award again in 1973 for The Word for World is Forest.[57] The book was influenced by Le Guin's anger over the Vietnam War, and explored themes of colonialism and militarism:[58][59] Le Guin later described it as the "most overt political statement" she had made in a fictional work.[57]

Le Guin continued to develop themes of equilibrium and coming-of-age in the next two installments of the Earthsea series, The Tombs of Atuan and The Farthest Shore, published in 1971 and 1972, respectively.[60] Both books were praised for their writing, while the exploration of death as a theme in The Farthest Shore also drew praise.[61] Her 1974 novel The Dispossessed again won both the Hugo and the Nebula awards for best novel, making her the first person to win both awards for each of two books.[62] Also set in the Hainish universe, the story explored anarchism and utopianism. Scholar Charlotte Spivack described it as representing a shift in Le Guin's science fiction towards discussing political ideas.[63][64] Several of her speculative fiction short stories from the period, including her first published story, were later anthologized in the 1975 collection The Wind's Twelve Quarters.[65][66] The fiction of the period 1966 to 1974, which also included The Lathe of Heaven, the Hugo Award-winning "The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas" and the Nebula Award-winning "The Day Before the Revolution",[67] constitutes Le Guin's best-known body of work.[68]

Wider exploration

Le Guin published a variety of work in the second half of the 1970s. This included speculative fiction in the form of the novel The Eye of the Heron, which, according to Le Guin, may be a part of the Hainish universe.[40][69][70] She also published Very Far Away from Anywhere Else, a realistic novel for adolescents,[71] as well as the collection Orsinian Tales and the novel Malafrena in 1976 and 1979, respectively. Though the latter two were set in the fictional country of Orsinia, the stories were realistic fiction rather than fantasy or science fiction.[72] The Language of the Night, a collection of essays, was released in 1979,[73] and Le Guin also published Wild Angels, a volume of poetry, in 1975.[74]

Between 1979, when she published Malafrena, and 1994, when the collection A Fisherman of the Inland Sea was released, Le Guin wrote primarily for a younger audience.[75] In 1985 she published the experimental work Always Coming Home.[76] She wrote 11 children's picture books, including the Catwings series, between 1979 and 1994, along with The Beginning Place, an adolescent fantasy novel, released in 1980.[34][75][77] Four more poetry collections were also published in this period, all of which were positively received.[74][75] She also revisited Earthsea, publishing Tehanu in 1990: coming eighteen years after The Farthest Shore, during which Le Guin's views had developed considerably, the book was grimmer in tone than the earlier works in the series, and challenged some ideas presented therein. It received critical praise,[78] won Le Guin a third Nebula Award for Best Novel,[79] and led to the series being recognized among adult literature.[80]

Later writings

Le Guin returned to the Hainish Cycle in the 1990s after a lengthy hiatus with the publication of a series of short stories, beginning with "The Shobies' Story" in 1990.[81] These stories included "Coming of Age in Karhide" (1995), which explored growing into adulthood and was set on the same planet as The Left Hand of Darkness.[82] It was described by scholar Sandra Lindow as "so transgressively sexual and so morally courageous" that Le Guin "could not have written it in the '60s".[81] In the same year she published the story suite Four Ways to Forgiveness, and followed it up with "Old Music and the Slave Women", a fifth, connected, story in 1999. All five of the stories explored freedom and rebellion within a slave society.[83] In 2000 she published The Telling, which would be her final Hainish novel, and the next year released Tales from Earthsea and The Other Wind, the last two Earthsea books.[40][84] The latter won the World Fantasy Award for Best Novel in 2002.[85]

From 2002 onwards several collections and anthologies of Le Guin's work were published. A series of her stories from the period 1994–2002 was released in 2002 in the collection The Birthday of the World and Other Stories, along with the novella Paradises Lost.[86] The volume examined unconventional ideas about gender, as well as anarchist themes.[87][88][89] Other collections included Changing Planes, also released in 2002, while the anthologies included The Unreal and the Real (2012),[40] and The Hainish Novels and Stories, a two-volume set of works from the Hainish universe released by the Library of America.[90]

Other works from this period included Lavinia (2008), based on a character from Virgil's Aeneid,[91] and the Annals of the Western Shore trilogy, consisting of Gifts (2004), Voices (2006), and Powers (2007).[92] Although Annals of the Western Shore was written for an adolescent audience, the third volume, Powers, received the Nebula Award for Best Novel in 2009.[92][93] In her final years, Le Guin largely turned away from fiction, and produced a number of essays, poems, and some translation.[5] Her final publications included the non-fiction collections Dreams Must Explain Themselves and Ursula K Le Guin: Conversations on Writing, and the poetry volume So Far So Good: Final Poems 2014–2018, all of which were released after her death.[40][94][95]

Style and influences

Influences

Once I learned to read, I read everything. I read all the famous fantasies – Alice in Wonderland, and Wind in the Willows, and Kipling. I adored Kipling's Jungle Book. And then when I got older I found Lord Dunsany. He opened up a whole new world – the world of pure fantasy. And ... Worm Ouroboros. Again, pure fantasy. Very, very fattening. And then my brother and I blundered into science fiction when I was 11 or 12. Early Asimov, things like that. But that didn't have too much effect on me. It wasn't until I came back to science fiction and discovered Sturgeon – but particularly Cordwainer Smith. ... I read the story "Alpha Ralpha Boulevard", and it just made me go, "Wow! This stuff is so beautiful, and so strange, and I want to do something like that."

—Ursula K. Le Guin[96]

Le Guin read both classic and speculative fiction widely in her youth. She later said that science fiction did not have much impact on her until she read the works of Theodore Sturgeon and Cordwainer Smith, and that she had sneered at the genre as a child.[33][96] Authors Le Guin describes as influential include Victor Hugo, William Wordsworth, Charles Dickens, Boris Pasternak, and Philip K. Dick. Le Guin and Dick attended the same high-school, but did not know each other; Le Guin later described her novel The Lathe of Heaven as an homage to him.[14][33][97][98] She also considered J. R. R. Tolkien and Leo Tolstoy to be stylistic influences, and preferred reading Virginia Woolf and Jorge Luis Borges to well-known science-fiction authors such as Robert Heinlein, whose writing she described as being of the "white man conquers the universe" tradition.[99] Several scholars state that the influence of mythology, which Le Guin enjoyed reading as a child, is also visible in much of her work: for example, the short story "The Dowry of Angyar" is described as a retelling of a Norse myth.[14][100]

The discipline of cultural anthropology had a powerful influence on Le Guin's writing.[101] Her father Alfred Kroeber is considered a pioneer in the field, and was a director of the University of California Museum of Anthropology: as a consequence of his research, Le Guin was exposed to anthropology and cultural exploration as a child. In addition to myths and legends, she read such volumes as The Leaves of the Golden Bough by Lady Frazer, a children's book adapted from The Golden Bough, a study of myth and religion by her husband James George Frazer.[57][101][102][103][104] She described living with her father's friends and acquaintances as giving her the experience of the other.[33] The experiences of Ishi, in particular, were influential on Le Guin, and elements of his story have been identified in works such as Planet of Exile, City of Illusions, and The Word for World Is Forest and The Dispossessed.[57]

Several scholars have commented that Le Guin's writing was influenced by Carl Jung, and specifically by the idea of Jungian archetypes.[105][106] In particular, the shadow in A Wizard of Earthsea is seen as the Shadow archetype from Jungian psychology, representing Ged's pride, fear, and desire for power.[107][108][109] Le Guin discussed her interpretation of this archetype, and her interest in the dark and repressed parts of the psyche, in a 1974 lecture.[108] She stated elsewhere that she had never read Jung before writing the first Earthsea books.[107][108] Other archetypes, including the Mother, Animus, and Anima, have also been identified in Le Guin's writing.[105]

Philosophical Taoism had a large role in Le Guin's world view,[110] and the influence of Taoist thought can be seen in many of her stories.[111][112] Many of Le Guin's protagonists, including in The Lathe of Heaven, embody the Taoist ideal of leaving things alone. The anthropologists of the Hainish universe try not to meddle with the cultures they encounter, while one of the earliest lessons Ged learns in A Wizard of Earthsea is not to use magic unless it is absolutely necessary.[112] Taoist influence is evident in Le Guin's depiction of equilibrium in the world of Earthsea: the archipelago is depicted as being based on a delicate balance, which is disrupted by somebody in each of the first three novels. This includes an equilibrium between land and sea, implicit in the name "Earthsea", between people and their natural environment,[113] and a larger cosmic equilibrium, which wizards are tasked with maintaining.[114] Another prominent Taoist idea is the reconciliation of opposites such as light and dark, or good and evil. A number of Hainish novels, The Dispossessed prominent among them, explored such a process of reconciliation.[115] In the Earthsea universe, it is not the dark powers, but the characters' misunderstanding of the balance of life, that is depicted as evil,[116] in contrast to conventional Western stories in which good and evil are in constant conflict.[117][118]

Genre and style

Although Le Guin is primarily known for her works of speculative fiction, she also wrote realistic fiction, non-fiction, poetry, and several other literary forms, and as a result her work is difficult to classify.[2] Her writings received critical attention from mainstream critics, critics of children's literature, and critics of speculative fiction.[2] Le Guin herself said that she would prefer to be known as an "American novelist".[3] Le Guin's transgression of conventional boundaries of genre led to literary criticism of Le Guin becoming "Balkanized", particularly between scholars of children's literature and speculative fiction.[2] Commentators have noted that the Earthsea novels specifically received less critical attention because they were considered children's books. Le Guin herself took exception to this treatment of children's literature, describing it as "adult chauvinist piggery".[2][119] In 1976, literature scholar George Slusser criticized the "silly publication classification designating the original series as 'children's literature'",[120] while in Barbara Bucknall's opinion Le Guin "can be read, like Tolkien, by ten-year-olds and by adults. These stories are ageless because they deal with problems that confront us at any age."[120]

Fortunately, though extrapolation is an element in science fiction, it isn't the name of the game by any means. It is far too rationalist and simplistic to satisfy the imaginative mind, whether the writer's or the reader's. Variables are the spice of life. [If] you like you can read [a lot of] science fiction, as a thought-experiment. Let's say (says Mary Shelley) that a young doctor creates a human being in his laboratory; let's say (says Philip K. Dick) that the Allies lost the second world war; let's say this or that is such and so, and see what happens... In a story so conceived, the moral complexity proper to the modern novel need not be sacrificed, nor is there any built-in dead end; thought and intuition can move freely within bounds set only by the terms of the experiment, which may be very large indeed.

—Ursula K. Le Guin, in the introduction to the 1976 edition of The Left Hand of Darkness.[121]

Several of her works have a premise drawn from sociology, psychology, or philosophy.[122][123] As a result, Le Guin's writing is often described as "soft" science fiction, and she has been described as the "patron saint" of this sub-genre.[124][125] A number of science fiction authors have objected to the term "soft science fiction", describing it as a potentially pejorative term used to dismiss stories not based on problems in physics, astronomy, or engineering, and also to target the writing of women or other groups under-represented in the genre.[126] Le Guin suggested the term "social science fiction" for some of her writing, while pointing out that many of her stories were not science fiction at all. She argued that the term "soft science fiction" was divisive, and implied a narrow view of what constitutes valid science fiction.[15]

The influence of anthropology can be seen in the setting Le Guin chose for a number of her works. Several of her protagonists are anthropologists or ethnologists exploring a world alien to them.[127] This is particularly true in the stories set in the Hainish universe, an alternative reality in which humans did not evolve on Earth, but on Hain. The Hainish subsequently colonized many planets, before losing contact with them, giving rise to varied but related biology and social structure.[57][127] Examples include Rocannon in Rocannon's World and Genly Ai in The Left Hand of Darkness. Other characters, such as Shevek in The Dispossessed, become cultural observers in the course of their journeys on other planets.[101][128] Le Guin's writing often examines alien cultures, and particularly the human cultures from planets other than Earth in the Hainish universe.[127] In discovering these "alien" worlds, Le Guin's protagonists, and by extension the readers, also journey into themselves, and challenge the nature of what they consider "alien" and what they consider "native".[129]

Several of Le Guin's works have featured stylistic or structural features that were unusual or subversive. The heterogeneous structure of The Left Hand of Darkness, described as "distinctly post-modern", was unusual for the time of its publication.[53] This was in marked contrast to the structure of (primarily male-authored) traditional science fiction, which was straightforward and linear.[130] The novel was framed as part of a report sent to the Ekumen by the protagonist Genly Ai after his time on the planet Gethen, thus suggesting that Ai was selecting and ordering the material, consisting of personal narration, diary extracts, Gethenian myths, and ethnological reports.[131] Earthsea also employed an unconventional narrative form described by scholar Mike Cadden as "free indirect discourse", in which the feelings of the protagonist are not directly separated from the narration, making the narrator seem sympathetic to the characters, and removing the skepticism towards a character's thoughts and emotions that are a feature of more direct narration.[132] Cadden suggests that this method leads to younger readers sympathizing directly with the characters, making it an effective technique for young-adult literature.[133]

A number of Le Guin's writings, including the Earthsea series, challenged the conventions of epic fantasies and myths. Many of the protagonists in Earthsea were dark-skinned individuals, in comparison to the white-skinned heroes more traditionally used; some of the antagonists, in contrast, were white-skinned, a switching of race roles that has been remarked upon by multiple critics.[134][135] In a 2001 interview, Le Guin attributed the frequent lack of character illustrations on her book covers to her choice of non-white protagonists. She explained this choice, saying: "most people in the world aren't white. Why in the future would we assume they are?"[57] Her 1985 book Always Coming Home, described as "her great experiment", included a story told from the perspective of a young protagonist, but also included poems, rough drawings of plants and animals, myths, and anthropological reports from the matriarchal society of the Kesh, a fictional people living in the Napa valley after a catastrophic global flood.[40][76]

Themes

Gender and sexuality

Gender and sexuality are prominent themes in a number of Le Guin's works. The Left Hand of Darkness, published in 1969, was among the first books in the genre now known as feminist science fiction, and is the most famous examination of androgyny in science fiction.[136] The story is set on the fictional planet of Gethen, whose inhabitants are ambisexual humans with no fixed gender identity, who adopt female or male sexual characteristics for brief periods of their sexual cycle.[137] Which sex they adopt can depend on context and relationships.[138] Gethen was portrayed as a society without war, as a result of this absence of fixed gender characteristics, and also without sexuality as a continuous factor in social relationships.[54][137] Gethenian culture was explored in the novel through the eyes of a Terran, whose masculinity proves a barrier to cross-cultural communication.[54] Outside the Hainish Cycle, Le Guin's use of a female protagonist in The Tombs of Atuan, published in 1971, was described as a "significant exploration of womanhood".[139]

 
Le Guin at a reading in Danville, California (June 2008)

Le Guin's attitude towards gender and feminism evolved considerably over time.[140] Although The Left Hand of Darkness was seen as a landmark exploration of gender, it also received criticism for not going far enough. Reviewers pointed to its usage of masculine gender pronouns to describe its androgynous characters,[53] the lack of androgynous characters portrayed in stereotypical feminine roles,[141] and the portrayal of heterosexuality as the norm on Gethen.[142] Le Guin's portrayal of gender in Earthsea was also described as perpetuating the notion of a male-dominated world; according to the Encyclopedia of Science Fiction, "Le Guin saw men as the actors and doers in the [world], while women remain the still centre, the well from which they drink".[40][143][144] Le Guin initially defended her writing; in a 1976 essay "Is Gender Necessary?" she wrote that gender was secondary to the primary theme of loyalty in The Left Hand of Darkness. Le Guin revisited this essay in 1988, and acknowledged that gender was central to the novel;[53] she also apologized for depicting Gethenians solely in heterosexual relationships.[142]

Le Guin responded to these critiques in her subsequent writing. She intentionally used feminine pronouns for all sexually latent Gethenians in her 1995 short story "Coming of Age in Karhide", and in a later reprinting of "Winter's King", which was first published in 1969.[141][145][146] "Coming of Age in Karhide" was later anthologized in the 2002 collection The Birthday of the World, which contained six other stories featuring unorthodox sexual relationships and marital arrangements.[89] She also revisited gender relations in Earthsea in Tehanu, published in 1990.[147] This volume was described as a rewriting or reimagining of The Tombs of Atuan, because the power and status of the female protagonist Tenar are the inverse of what they were in the earlier book, which was also focused on her and Ged.[148] During this later period she commented that she considered The Eye of the Heron, published in 1978, to be her first work genuinely centered on a woman.[149]

Moral development

Le Guin explores coming of age, and moral development more broadly, in many of her writings.[150] This is particularly the case in those works written for a younger audience, such as Earthsea and Annals of the Western Shore. Le Guin wrote in a 1973 essay that she chose to explore coming-of-age in Earthsea since she was writing for an adolescent audience: "Coming of age ... is a process that took me many years; I finished it, so far as I ever will, at about age thirty-one; and so I feel rather deeply about it. So do most adolescents. It's their main occupation, in fact."[151] She also said that fantasy was best suited as a medium for describing coming of age, because exploring the subconscious was difficult using the language of "rational daily life".[151][152]

The first three Earthsea novels together follow Ged from youth to old age, and each of them also follow the coming of age of a different character.[153] A Wizard of Earthsea focuses on Ged's adolescence, while The Tombs of Atuan and The Farthest Shore explore that of Tenar and the prince Arren, respectively.[154][123] A Wizard of Earthsea is frequently described as a Bildungsroman,[155][156] in which Ged's coming of age is intertwined with the physical journey he undertakes through the novel.[157] To Mike Cadden the book was a convincing tale "to a reader as young and possibly as headstrong as Ged, and therefore sympathetic to him".[156] Reviewers have described the ending of the novel, wherein Ged finally accepts the shadow as a part of himself, as a rite of passage. Scholar Jeanne Walker writes that the rite of passage at the end was an analogue for the entire plot of A Wizard of Earthsea, and that the plot itself plays the role of a rite of passage for an adolescent reader.[158][159]

Each volume of Annals of the Western Shore also describes the coming of age of its protagonists,[160] and features explorations of being enslaved to one's own power.[160][161] The process of growing up is depicted as seeing beyond narrow choices the protagonists are presented with by society. In Gifts, Orrec and Gry realize that the powers their people possess can be used in two ways: for control and dominion, or for healing and nurturing. This recognition allows them to take a third choice, and leave.[162] This wrestling with choice has been compared to the choices the characters are forced to make in Le Guin's short story "The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas".[162] Similarly, Ged helps Tenar in The Tombs of Atuan to value herself and to find choices that she did not see,[163][164] leading her to leave the Tombs with him.[165]

Political systems

Alternative social and political systems are a recurring theme in Le Guin's writing.[6][166] Critics have paid particular attention to The Dispossessed and Always Coming Home,[166] although Le Guin explores related themes in a number of her works,[166] such as in "The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas".[167] The Dispossessed is an anarchist utopian novel, which according to Le Guin drew from pacifist anarchists, including Peter Kropotkin, as well as from the counterculture of the 1960s and 1970s.[103] Le Guin has been credited with "[rescuing] anarchism from the cultural ghetto to which it has been consigned", and helping to bring it into the intellectual mainstream.[168] Fellow author Kathleen Ann Goonan wrote that Le Guin's work confronted the "paradigm of insularity toward the suffering of people, other living beings, and resources", and explored "life-respecting sustainable alternatives".[6]

The Dispossessed, set on the twin planets of Urras and Anarres, features a planned anarchist society depicted as an "ambiguous utopia". The society, created by settlers from Urras, is materially poorer than the wealthy society of Urras, but more ethically and morally advanced.[169] Unlike classical utopias, the society of Anarres is portrayed as neither perfect nor static; the protagonist Shevek finds himself traveling to Urras to pursue his research. Nonetheless, the misogyny and hierarchy present in the authoritarian society of Urras is absent among the anarchists, who base their social structure on cooperation and individual liberty.[169] The Eye of the Heron, published a few years after The Dispossessed, was described as continuing Le Guin's exploration of human freedom, through a conflict between two societies of opposing philosophies: a town inhabited by descendants of pacifists, and a city inhabited by descendants of criminals.[170]

Always Coming Home, set in California in the distant future, examines a warlike society, resembling contemporary American society, from the perspective of the Kesh, its pacifist neighbors. The society of the Kesh has been identified by scholars as a feminist utopia, which Le Guin uses to explore the role of technology.[171] Scholar Warren Rochelle stated that it was "neither a matriarchy nor a patriarchy: men and women just are".[172] "The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas", a parable depicting a society in which widespread wealth, happiness, and security, comes at the cost of the continued misery of a single child, has also been read as a critique of contemporary American society.[173][174] The Word for World is Forest explored the manner in which the structure of society affects the natural environment; in the novel, the natives of the planet of Athshe have adapted their way of life to the ecology of the planet.[59] The colonizing human society, in contrast, is depicted as destructive and uncaring; in depicting it, Le Guin also critiqued colonialism and imperialism, driven partly by her disapproval for U.S. intervention in the Vietnam War.[58][59][175]

Other social structures are examined in works such as the story cycle Four Ways to Forgiveness, and the short story "Old Music and the Slave Women", occasionally described as a "fifth way to forgiveness". [176] Set in the Hainish universe, the five stories together examine revolution and reconstruction in a slave-owning society.[177][178] According to Rochelle, the stories examine a society that has the potential to build a "truly human community", made possible by the Ekumen's recognition of the slaves as human beings, thus offering them the prospect of freedom and the possibility of utopia, brought about through revolution.[179] Slavery, justice, and the role of women in society are also explored in Annals of the Western Shore.[180][181]

Reception and legacy

Reception

Le Guin received rapid recognition after the publication of The Left Hand of Darkness in 1969, and by the 1970s she was among the best known writers in the field.[2][40] Her books sold many millions of copies, and were translated into more than 40 languages; several remain in print many decades after their first publication.[5][9][182] Her work received intense academic attention; she has been described as being the "premier writer of both fantasy and science fiction" of the 1970s,[183] the most frequently discussed science fiction writer of the 1970s,[184] and over her career, as intensively studied as Philip K. Dick.[40] Later in her career, she also received recognition from mainstream literary critics: in an obituary, Jo Walton stated that Le Guin "was so good that the mainstream couldn't dismiss SF any more".[55] According to scholar Donna White, Le Guin was a "major voice in American letters", whose writing was the subject of many volumes of literary critique, more than two hundred scholarly articles, and a number of dissertations.[2]

Le Guin was unusual in receiving most of her recognition for her earliest works, which remained her most popular;[99] a commentator in 2018 described a "tendency toward didacticism" in her later works,[9] while John Clute, writing in The Guardian, stated that her later writing "suffers from the need she clearly felt to speak responsibly to her large audience about important things; an artist being responsible can be an artist wearing a crown of thorns".[5] Not all of her works received as positive a reception; The Compass Rose was among the volumes that had a mixed reaction, while the Science Fiction Encyclopedia described The Eye of the Heron as "an over-diagrammatic political fable whose translucent simplicity approaches self-parody".[40] Even the critically well-received The Left Hand of Darkness, in addition to critique from feminists,[185] was described by Alexei Panshin as a "flat failure".[53]

Her writing was recognized by the popular media and by commentators. The Los Angeles Times commented in 2009 that after the death of Arthur C. Clarke, Le Guin was "arguably the most acclaimed science fiction writer on the planet", and went on to describe her as a "pioneer" of literature for young people.[99] In an obituary, Clute described Le Guin as having "presided over American science fiction for nearly half a century", and as having a reputation as an author of the "first rank".[5] In 2016, The New York Times described her as "America's greatest living science fiction writer".[186] Praise for Le Guin frequently focused on the social and political themes her work explored,[187] and for her prose; literary critic Harold Bloom described Le Guin as an "exquisite stylist", saying that in her writing, "Every word was exactly in place and every sentence or line had resonance". According to Bloom, Le Guin was a "visionary who set herself against all brutality, discrimination, and exploitation".[6] The New York Times described her as using "a lean but lyrical style" to explore issues of moral relevance.[9] Prefacing an interview in 2008, Vice magazine described Le Guin as having written "some of the more mind-warping [science fiction] and fantasy tales of the past 40 years".[15]

Le Guin's fellow authors also praised her writing. After Le Guin's death in 2018, writer Michael Chabon referred to her as the "greatest American writer of her generation", and said that she had "awed [him] with the power of an unfettered imagination".[6][7] Author Margaret Atwood hailed Le Guin's "sane, smart, crafty and lyrical voice", and wrote that social injustice was a powerful motivation through Le Guin's life.[188] Her prose, according to Zadie Smith, was "as elegant and beautiful as any written in the twentieth century".[6] Academic and author Joyce Carol Oates highlighted Le Guin's "outspoken sense of justice, decency, and common sense", and called her "one of the great American writers and a visionary artist whose work will long endure".[6] China Miéville described Le Guin as a "literary colossus", and wrote that she was a "writer of intense ethical seriousness and intelligence, of wit and fury, of radical politics, of subtlety, of freedom and yearning".[6]

Awards and recognition

 
Le Guin at a "meet the author" event in 2004

The accolades Le Guin has received include numerous annual awards for individual works. She won eight Hugo Awards from twenty-six nominations, and six Nebula Awards from eighteen nominations, including four Nebula Awards for Best Novel from six nominations, more than any other writer.[85][189] Le Guin won twenty-four Locus Awards,[85] voted for by subscribers of Locus Magazine,[190] and as of 2019 was joint third for total wins, as well as second behind Neil Gaiman, for the number of wins for works of fiction.[191] For her novels alone she won five Locus Awards, four Nebula Awards, two Hugo Awards, and one World Fantasy Award, and won each of those awards in short fiction categories as well.[32][85] Her third Earthsea novel, The Farthest Shore, won the 1973 National Book Award for Young People's Literature,[192] and she was a finalist for ten Mythopoeic Awards, nine in Fantasy and one for Scholarship.[85] Her 1996 collection Unlocking the Air and Other Stories was one of three finalists for the 1997 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction.[193] Other awards won by Le Guin include three James Tiptree Jr. Awards, and three Jupiter Awards.[85] She won her final Hugo award a year after her death, for a complete edition of Earthsea, illustrated by Charles Vess; the same volume also won a Locus award.[85]

Other awards and accolades have recognized Le Guin's contributions to speculative fiction. She was voted a Gandalf Grand Master Award by the World Science Fiction Society in 1979.[85] The Science Fiction Research Association gave her its Pilgrim Award in 1989 for her "lifetime contributions to SF and fantasy scholarship".[85] At the 1995 World Fantasy Convention she won the World Fantasy Award for Life Achievement, a judged recognition of outstanding service to the fantasy field.[85][194] The Science Fiction and Fantasy Hall of Fame inducted her in 2001, its sixth class of two deceased and two living writers.[195] The Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America named her its 20th Grand Master in 2003: she was the second, and as of 2019 one of only six, women to receive that honor.[196][197][198] In 2013, she was given the Eaton Award by the University of California, Riverside, for lifetime achievement in science fiction.[85][199]

External video
  Neil Gaiman presenting the Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters to Le Guin at the National Book Awards, November 19, 2014, C-SPAN

Later in her career Le Guin also received accolades recognizing her contributions to literature more generally. In April 2000, the U.S. Library of Congress named Le Guin a Living Legend in the "Writers and Artists" category for her significant contributions to America's cultural heritage.[200] The American Library Association granted her the annual Margaret Edwards Award in 2004, and also selected her to deliver the annual May Hill Arbuthnot Lecture.[201][202] The Edwards Award recognizes one writer and a particular body of work: the 2004 panel cited the first four Earthsea volumes, The Left Hand of Darkness and The Beginning Place. The panel said that Le Guin "has inspired four generations of young adults to read beautifully constructed language, visit fantasy worlds that inform them about their own lives, and think about their ideas that are neither easy nor inconsequential".[201] A collection of Le Guin's works was published by the Library of America in 2016, an honor only rarely given to living writers.[186] The National Book Foundation awarded Le Guin its Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters in 2014, stating that she had "defied conventions of narrative, language, character, and genre, and transcended boundaries between fantasy and realism to forge new paths for literary fiction".[203][204] The American Academy of Arts and Letters made her a member in 2017.[205] On July 27, 2021, Le Guin was honored by the US Postal Service with the 33rd stamp in the Postal Service's Literary Arts series. The stamp features a portrait of the author taken from a 2006 photograph against a background image inspired by her book The Left Hand of Darkness. The stamp was designed by Donato Gionacola.[206]

Legacy and influence

Le Guin had a considerable influence on the field of speculative fiction; Jo Walton argued that Le Guin played a large role in both broadening the genre and helping genre writers achieve mainstream recognition.[55][207][208] The Earthsea books are cited as having a wide impact, including outside the field of literature. Atwood considers A Wizard of Earthsea one of the "wellsprings" of fantasy literature,[209] and modern writers have credited the book for the idea of a "wizard school", later made famous by the Harry Potter series of books,[210] and with popularizing the trope of a boy wizard, also present in Harry Potter.[211] The notion that names can exert power is a theme in the Earthsea series; critics have suggested that this inspired Hayao Miyazaki's use of the idea in his 2001 film Spirited Away.[212]

 
Neil Gaiman, pictured here in 2013, is among the many authors who have acknowledged Le Guin's influence on their own writing.

Le Guin's writings set in the Hainish universe also had a wide influence. Le Guin coined the name "ansible" for an instantaneous interstellar communication device in 1966; the term was later adopted by several other writers, including Orson Scott Card in the Ender Series and Neil Gaiman in a script for a Doctor Who episode.[213] Suzanne Reid wrote that at the time The Left Hand of Darkness was written, Le Guin's ideas of androgyny were unique not only to science fiction, but to literature in general.[54] That volume is specifically cited as leaving a large legacy; in discussing it, literary critic Harold Bloom wrote "Le Guin, more than Tolkien, has raised fantasy into high literature, for our time".[214] Bloom followed this up by listing the book in his The Western Canon (1994) as one of the books in his conception of artistic works that have been important and influential in Western culture.[215] This view was echoed in The Paris Review, which wrote that "No single work did more to upend the genre's conventions than The Left Hand of Darkness",[33] while White argued that it was one of the seminal works of science fiction, as important as Mary Shelley's Frankenstein (1818).[53]

Commentators have also described Le Guin as being influential in the field of literature more generally. Literary critic Elaine Showalter suggested that Le Guin "set the pace as a writer for women unlearning silence, fear, and self-doubt",[6] while writer Brian Attebery stated that "[Le Guin] invented us: science fiction and fantasy critics like me but also poets and essayists and picture book writers and novelists".[6] Le Guin's own literary criticism proved influential; her 1973 essay "From Elfland to Poughkeepsie" led to renewed interest in the work of Kenneth Morris, and eventually to the publication of a posthumous novel by Morris.[216] Le Guin also played a role in bringing speculative fiction into the literary mainstream by supporting journalists and scholarly endeavors examining the genre.[207]

Several prominent authors acknowledge Le Guin's influence on their own writing. Jo Walton wrote that "her way of looking at the world had a huge influence on me, not just as a writer but as a human being".[55] Other writers she influenced include Booker Prize winner Salman Rushdie, as well as David Mitchell, Gaiman, Algis Budrys, Goonan, and Iain Banks.[6][33][99] Mitchell, author of books such as Cloud Atlas, described A Wizard of Earthsea as having a strong influence on him, and said that he felt a desire to "wield words with the same power as Ursula Le Guin".[217] Le Guin is also credited with inspiring several female science fiction authors in the 1970s, including Vonda McIntyre. When McIntyre established a writers' workshop in Seattle in 1971, Le Guin was one of the instructors.[218] Film-maker Arwen Curry began production on a documentary about Le Guin in 2009, filming "dozens" of hours of interviews with the author as well as many other writers and artists who have been inspired by her. Curry launched a successful crowdfunding campaign to finish the documentary in early 2016 after winning a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities.[219]

In October 2021, the Ursula K. Le Guin Prize for Fiction was announced. The award is managed by the Ursula K. Le Guin Literary Trust and a panel of jurors. The prize is worth US$25,000 and will be awarded annually to "a single book-length work of imaginative fiction." The inaugural shortlist was announced on July 28, 2022.[220] The prize's inaugural winner was announced on October 21, 2022, Le Guin's birthday.[221][222]

Adaptations of her work

Le Guin's works have been adapted for radio,[223][224] film, television, and the stage. Her 1971 novel The Lathe of Heaven has been released on film twice, in 1979 by WNET with Le Guin's participation, and then in 2002 by the A&E Network. In a 2008 interview, she said she considered the 1979 version as "the only good adaptation to film" of her work to date.[15] In the early 1980s Hayao Miyazaki asked to create an animated adaptation of Earthsea. Le Guin, who was unfamiliar with his work and anime in general, initially turned down the offer, but later accepted after seeing My Neighbor Totoro.[225] The third and fourth Earthsea books were used as the basis of Tales from Earthsea, released in 2006. Rather than being directed by Hayao Miyazaki himself, the film was directed by his son Gorō, which disappointed Le Guin. Le Guin was positive about the aesthetic of the film, writing that "much of it was beautiful", but was critical of the film's moral sense and its use of physical violence, and particularly the use of a villain whose death provided the film's resolution.[225] In 2004, the Sci Fi Channel adapted the first two books of the Earthsea trilogy as the miniseries Legend of Earthsea. Le Guin was highly critical of the miniseries, calling it a "far cry from the Earthsea I envisioned", objecting to the use of white actors for her red-, brown-, and black-skinned characters.[226]

Le Guin's novel The Left Hand of Darkness was adapted for the stage in 1995 by Chicago's Lifeline Theatre. Reviewer Jack Helbig at the Chicago Reader wrote that the "adaptation is intelligent and well crafted but ultimately unsatisfying", in large measure because it is extremely difficult to compress a complex 300-page novel into a two-hour stage presentation.[227] Paradises Lost was adapted into an opera by the opera program of the University of Illinois.[228][229] The opera was composed by Stephen A. Taylor;[228] the libretto has been attributed both to Kate Gale[230] and to Marcia Johnson.[228] Created in 2005,[230] the opera premiered in April 2012.[231] Le Guin described the effort as a "beautiful opera" in an interview, and expressed hopes that it would be picked up by other producers. She also said she was better pleased with stage versions, including Paradises Lost, than screen adaptations of her work to that date.[229] In 2013, the Portland Playhouse and Hand2Mouth Theatre produced a play based on The Left Hand of Darkness, directed and adapted by Jonathan Walters, with text written by John Schmor. The play opened May 2, 2013, and ran until June 16, 2013, in Portland, Oregon.[232]

Bibliography

Main article: Ursula K. Le Guin bibliography
 
Le Guin signing a book in 2013

Le Guin's career as a professional writer spanned nearly sixty years, from 1959 to 2018. During this period, she wrote more than twenty novels, more than a hundred short stories, more than a dozen volumes of poetry, five translations, and thirteen children's books.[9][205] Her writing encompassed speculative fiction, realistic fiction, non-fiction, screenplays, librettos, essays, poetry, speeches, translations, literary critiques, chapbooks, and children's fiction. Le Guin's first published work was the poem "Folksong from the Montayna Province" in 1959, while her first published short story was "An die Musik", in 1961. Her first professional publication was the short story "April in Paris" in 1962, while her first published novel was Rocannon's World, released by Ace Books in 1966.[39][40][43][233] Her final publications included the non-fiction collections Dreams Must Explain Themselves and Ursula K Le Guin: Conversations on Writing, both released after her death.[40][94] Her best-known works include the six volumes of the Earthsea series, and the many novels of the Hainish Cycle.[40][234]

See also

Citations

  1. ^ Le Guin, Ursula. . Archived from the original on March 6, 2014. Retrieved March 22, 2014.
  2. ^ a b c d e f g White 1999, pp. 1–2.
  3. ^ a b Phillips, Julie (December 2012). "Ursula K. Le Guin, American Novelist". Bookslut. from the original on January 20, 2017. Retrieved September 13, 2016.
  4. ^ a b c d White 1999, p. 2.
  5. ^ a b c d e Clute, John (January 24, 2018). "Ursula K Le Guin obituary". The Guardian. from the original on November 9, 2019. Retrieved February 28, 2019.
  6. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k "Fellow writers remember Ursula K. Le Guin, 1929–2018". Library of America. January 26, 2018. from the original on January 27, 2020. Retrieved March 5, 2019.
  7. ^ a b Chabon, Michael (November 20, 2019). "Le Guin's Subversive Imagination". The Paris Review. from the original on December 24, 2019. Retrieved November 24, 2019.
  8. ^ a b Spivack 1984, p. 1.
  9. ^ a b c d e f Jonas, Gerald (January 23, 2018). "Ursula K. Le Guin, Acclaimed for Her Fantasy Fiction, Is Dead at 88". The New York Times. from the original on January 23, 2018. Retrieved January 23, 2018.
  10. ^ a b c d e Cummins 1990, p. 2.
  11. ^ Hallowell, A. Irving (1962). "Theodora Kroeber. Ishi in Two Worlds: A Biography of the Last Wild Indian in North America". The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science. 340 (1): 164–165. doi:10.1177/000271626234000162. S2CID 145429704.
  12. ^ a b c d Spivack 1984, p. 2.
  13. ^ Kroeber, Theodora (1970). Alfred Kroeber; a Personal Configuration. University of California Press. p. 287. ISBN 978-0-520-01598-2.
  14. ^ a b c Spivack 1984, pp. 2–3.
  15. ^ a b c d Lafreniere, Steve (December 2008). . Vice. Archived from the original on July 9, 2011. Retrieved April 22, 2010.
  16. ^ Cummins 1990, p. 3.
  17. ^ a b Reid 1997, p. 5.
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  19. ^ a b Reid 1997, pp. 5–7.
  20. ^ Brown, Jeremy K. (November 2013). "Timeline". Ursula K. Le Guin. Infobase Learning. ISBN 978-1-4381-4937-0.
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  25. ^ Eidenmuller, Michael E. (February 13, 2009). "Top 100 Speeches of the 20th Century by Rank". American Rhetoric. from the original on October 27, 2015. Retrieved October 27, 2015.
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  27. ^ Woodall, Bernie (January 23, 2018). "U.S. author Ursula K. Le Guin dies at 88: family". Reuters. from the original on September 17, 2018. Retrieved September 16, 2018.
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  29. ^ Baer, April (June 9, 2018). . Oregon Public Broadcasting. Archived from the original on September 17, 2018. Retrieved September 16, 2018.
  30. ^ a b DeNies, Ramona (November 20, 2014). . Portland Monthly. Archived from the original on December 7, 2014.
  31. ^ Le Guin, Ursula (December 6, 2017). "The Literary Prize for the Refusal of Literary Prizes". The Paris Review. from the original on January 21, 2020. Retrieved December 25, 2018.
  32. ^ a b Dugdale, John (May 21, 2016). "How to turn down a prestigious literary prize – a winner's guide to etiquette". The Guardian. from the original on December 25, 2018. Retrieved December 25, 2018.
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  34. ^ a b Bernardo & Murphy 2006, p. 170.
  35. ^ Flood, Alison (December 24, 2009). "Le Guin accuses Authors Guild of 'deal with the devil'". The Guardian. from the original on May 8, 2014. Retrieved May 27, 2010. Ursula K Le Guin has resigned from the writers' organisation in protest at settlement with Google over digitisation.
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  37. ^ Bausells, Marta (June 3, 2015). "Ursula K Le Guin launches broadside on Amazon's 'sell it fast, sell it cheap' policy". The Guardian. from the original on April 19, 2019. Retrieved December 22, 2018.
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Sources

  • Bernardo, Susan M.; Murphy, Graham J. (2006). Ursula K. Le Guin: A Critical Companion. Greenwood Press. ISBN 978-0-313-33225-8.
  • Bloom, Harold (1987). "Introduction". In Bloom, Harold (ed.). Modern Critical Interpretations: Ursula Le Guin's The Left Hand of Darkness. Chelsea House Publications. pp. 1–10. ISBN 978-1-55546-064-8.
  • Cadden, Mike (2005). Ursula K. Le Guin Beyond Genre: Fiction for Children and Adults. Routledge. ISBN 978-0-415-99527-6.
  • Cummins, Elizabeth (1990). Understanding Ursula K. Le Guin. University of South Carolina Press. ISBN 978-0-87249-687-3.
  • Erlich, Richard D. (December 2009). Coyote's Song: The Teaching Stories of Ursula K. Le Guin. Wildside Press LLC. ISBN 978-1-4344-5775-2. from the original on February 3, 2021. Retrieved September 18, 2018.
  • Kuznets, Lois R. (1985). "'High Fantasy' in America: A Study of Lloyd Alexander, Ursula Le Guin, and Susan Cooper". The Lion and the Unicorn. 9: 19–35. doi:10.1353/uni.0.0075. S2CID 143248850.
  • Le Guin, Ursula (1978). The Wind's Twelve Quarters Volume I. Granada Publishing. ISBN 978-0-586-04623-4.
  • Lindow, Sandra J. (2012). Dancing the Tao: Le Guin and Moral Development. Cambridge Scholars Publishing. ISBN 978-1-4438-4302-7.
  • Lothian, Alexis (2006). "Grinding Axes and Balancing Oppositions: The Transformation of Feminisms in Ursula K. Le Guin's Science Fiction". Extrapolation. 47 (3): 380–395. doi:10.3828/extr.2006.47.3.4.
  • Nicholls, Peter; Clute, John; Sleight, Graham, eds. (April 7, 2018). "Le Guin, Ursula K.". The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction. Gollancz. from the original on April 26, 2018. Retrieved May 7, 2018.
  • Reid, Suzanne Elizabeth (1997). Presenting Ursula Le Guin. Twayne. ISBN 978-0-8057-4609-9.
  • Rochelle, Warren (2001). Communities of the Heart: The Rhetoric of Myth in the Fiction of Ursula K. Le Guin. Liverpool University Press. ISBN 978-0-85323-876-8.
  • Rochelle, Warren G. (2008). "Ursula K. Le Guin". A Companion to Science Fiction. John Wiley & Sons. pp. 408–419. ISBN 978-1-4051-4458-2. from the original on July 7, 2014. Retrieved November 13, 2020.
  • Slusser, George Edgar (1976). The Farthest Shores of Ursula K. Le Guin. Wildside Press LLC. ISBN 978-0-89370-205-2.
  • Spivack, Charlotte (1984). Ursula K. Le Guin. Twayne Publishers. ISBN 978-0-8057-7393-4.
  • Tymn, Marshall B. (1981). The Science fiction reference book. Starmont House. ISBN 978-0-916732-49-3.
  • White, Donna (1999). Dancing with Dragons: Ursula K. Le Guin and the Critics. Camden House. ISBN 978-1-57113-034-1.

Further reading

  • Bloom, Harold, ed. (2000). Ursula K. Leguin: Modern Critical Views. Chelsea House Publications. ISBN 978-0-87754-659-7.
  • Cart, Michael (1996). From Romance to Realism: 50 Years of Growth and Change in Young Adult Literature. Harper Collins. ISBN 978-0-06-024289-3. from the original on February 3, 2021. Retrieved September 14, 2018.
  • Davis, Laurence; Stillman, Peter (2005). The New Utopian Politics of Ursula K. Le Guin's The Dispossessed. Lexington Books. ISBN 978-0-7391-5820-3. from the original on February 3, 2021. Retrieved September 14, 2018.
  • Egoff, Sheila A. (1988). Worlds within: children's fantasy from the Middle Ages to today. American Library Association. ISBN 978-0-8389-0494-7.
  • Lehr, Susan S., ed. (1995). Battling Dragons: Issues and Controversy in Children's Literature. Greenwood Publishing Group, Incorporated. ISBN 978-0-435-08828-6. from the original on February 3, 2021. Retrieved September 14, 2018.
  • Reginald, Robert; Slusser, George, eds. (1997). Zephyr and Boreas: Winds of Change in the Fictions of Ursula K. Le Guin. Borgo Press. ISBN 978-0-916732-78-3.
  • Trites, Roberta Seelinger (2000). Disturbing the universe: power and repression in adolescent literature. University of Iowa Press. ISBN 978-0-87745-857-9.
  • Wayne, Kathryn Ross (1996). Redefining moral education: life, Le Guin, and language. Austin & Winfield. ISBN 978-1-880921-85-2. from the original on February 3, 2021. Retrieved September 14, 2018.

External links

 
Wikimedia Commons has media related to Ursula K. Le Guin.
 
Wikiquote has quotations related to Ursula K. Le Guin.

Interviews

  • An audio interview with Ursula K. Le Guin (MP3 format) from Hour 25
  • Jaggi, Maya (December 17, 2005). "The Magician". The Guardian.
  • "Oregon Art Beat: Author Ursula Le Guin". OPB FM.
  • Ursula Le Guin Bookworm Interviews (Audio) with Michael Silverblatt: January 1992, March 2001
  • "Mythmakers and Lawbreakers". dialogues.

Speeches

  • "Ursula K Le Guin's speech at National Book Awards: 'Books aren't just commodities'". The Guardian. November 20, 2014.
  • "Ursula K. Le Guin on speaking truth to power at National Book Awards". Los Angeles Times. November 20, 2014.

February 17, 2023
ursula, guin, ursula, kroeber, guin, kroh, bər, gwin, october, 1929, january, 2018, american, author, best, known, works, speculative, fiction, including, science, fiction, works, hainish, universe, earthsea, fantasy, series, first, published, 1959, literary, . Ursula Kroeber Le Guin ˈ k r oʊ b er l e ˈ ɡ w ɪ n KROH ber le GWIN 1 October 21 1929 January 22 2018 was an American author best known for her works of speculative fiction including science fiction works set in her Hainish universe and the Earthsea fantasy series She was first published in 1959 and her literary career spanned nearly sixty years producing more than twenty novels and over a hundred short stories in addition to poetry literary criticism translations and children s books Frequently described as an author of science fiction Le Guin has also been called a major voice in American Letters 2 Le Guin said she would prefer to be known as an American novelist 3 Ursula K Le GuinLe Guin in 1995BornUrsula Kroeber 1929 10 21 October 21 1929Berkeley California U S DiedJanuary 22 2018 2018 01 22 aged 88 Portland Oregon U S OccupationAuthorEducationRadcliffe College BA Columbia University MA Periodc 1959 2018GenreScience fictionfantasyrealistic fictionliterary criticismpoetryessayNotable worksEarthsea 1964 2018 The Left Hand of Darkness 1969 The Dispossessed 1974 SpouseCharles Le Guin m 1953 wbr ParentsAlfred KroeberTheodora KroeberRelativesKarl Kroeber brother Websitewww wbr ursulakleguin wbr comLe Guin was born in Berkeley California to author Theodora Kroeber and anthropologist Alfred Louis Kroeber Having earned a master s degree in French Le Guin began doctoral studies but abandoned these after her marriage in 1953 to historian Charles Le Guin She began writing full time in the late 1950s and achieved major critical and commercial success with A Wizard of Earthsea 1968 and The Left Hand of Darkness 1969 which have been described by Harold Bloom as her masterpieces 4 For the latter volume Le Guin won both the Hugo and Nebula awards for best novel becoming the first woman to do so Several more works set in Earthsea or the Hainish universe followed others included books set in the fictional country of Orsinia several works for children and many anthologies Cultural anthropology Taoism feminism and the writings of Carl Jung all had a strong influence on Le Guin s work Many of her stories used anthropologists or cultural observers as protagonists and Taoist ideas about balance and equilibrium have been identified in several writings Le Guin often subverted typical speculative fiction tropes such as through her use of dark skinned protagonists in Earthsea and also used unusual stylistic or structural devices in books such as the experimental work Always Coming Home 1985 Social and political themes including race gender sexuality and coming of age were prominent in her writing She explored alternative political structures in many stories such as in the philosophical short story The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas 1973 and the anarchist utopian novel The Dispossessed 1974 Le Guin s writing was enormously influential in the field of speculative fiction and has been the subject of intense critical attention She received numerous accolades including eight Hugos six Nebulas and twenty two Locus Awards and in 2003 became the second woman honored as a Grand Master of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America The U S Library of Congress named her a Living Legend in 2000 and in 2014 she won the National Book Foundation Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters Le Guin influenced many other authors including Booker Prize winner Salman Rushdie David Mitchell Neil Gaiman and Iain Banks After her death in 2018 critic John Clute wrote that Le Guin had presided over American science fiction for nearly half a century 5 while author Michael Chabon referred to her as the greatest American writer of her generation 6 7 Contents 1 Life 1 1 Childhood and education 1 2 Married life and death 1 3 Views and advocacy 2 Chronology of writings 2 1 Early work 2 2 Critical attention 2 3 Wider exploration 2 4 Later writings 3 Style and influences 3 1 Influences 3 2 Genre and style 4 Themes 4 1 Gender and sexuality 4 2 Moral development 4 3 Political systems 5 Reception and legacy 5 1 Reception 5 2 Awards and recognition 5 3 Legacy and influence 5 4 Adaptations of her work 6 Bibliography 7 See also 8 Citations 9 Sources 10 Further reading 11 External links 11 1 Interviews 11 2 SpeechesLife EditChildhood and education Edit Ursula s father Alfred Kroeber with Ishi the last of the Yahi people 1911 Ursula K Le Guin was born Ursula Kroeber in Berkeley California on October 21 1929 Her father Alfred Louis Kroeber was an anthropologist at the University of California Berkeley 8 9 Le Guin s mother Theodora Kroeber born Theodora Covel Kracaw had a graduate degree in psychology but turned to writing in her sixties developing a successful career as an author Among her works was Ishi in Two Worlds 1961 a biographical volume about Ishi an Indigenous American who became the last known member of the Yahi tribe after the rest of its members were killed by white colonizers 8 10 11 Le Guin had three older brothers Karl who became a literary scholar Theodore and Clifton 12 13 The family had a large book collection and the siblings all became interested in reading while they were young 12 The Kroeber family had a number of visitors including well known academics such as Robert Oppenheimer Le Guin would later use Oppenheimer as the model for Shevek the physicist protagonist of The Dispossessed 10 12 The family divided its time between a summer home in the Napa Valley and a house in Berkeley during the academic year 10 Le Guin s reading included science fiction and fantasy she and her siblings frequently read issues of Thrilling Wonder Stories and Astounding Science Fiction She was fond of myths and legends particularly Norse mythology and of Native American legends that her father would narrate Other authors she enjoyed were Lord Dunsany and Lewis Padgett 12 Le Guin also developed an early interest in writing she wrote a short story when she was nine and submitted her first short story to Astounding Science Fiction when she was eleven The piece was rejected and she did not submit anything else for another ten years 4 14 15 Le Guin attended Berkeley High School 16 She received her Bachelor of Arts degree in Renaissance French and Italian literature from Radcliffe College of Harvard University in 1951 and graduated as a member of the Phi Beta Kappa honor society 17 As a child she had been interested in biology and poetry but had been limited in her choice of career by her difficulties with mathematics 17 Le Guin undertook graduate studies at Columbia University and earned a Master of Arts degree in French in 1952 18 Soon after she began working towards a PhD and won a Fulbright grant to continue her studies in France from 1953 to 1954 10 18 Married life and death Edit In 1953 while traveling to France aboard the Queen Mary Ursula met historian Charles Le Guin 18 They married in Paris in December 1953 19 According to Le Guin the marriage signaled the end of the doctorate for her 18 While her husband finished his doctorate at Emory University in Georgia and later at the University of Idaho Le Guin taught French and worked as a secretary until the birth of her daughter Elisabeth in 1957 19 A second daughter Caroline was born in 1959 20 Also in that year Charles became an instructor in history at Portland State University and the couple moved to Portland Oregon where their son Theodore was born in 1964 18 They would live in Portland for the rest of their lives 21 although Le Guin received further Fulbright grants to travel to London in 1968 and 1975 10 Le Guin s writing career began in the late 1950s but the time she spent caring for her children constrained her writing schedule 18 She would continue writing and publishing for nearly 60 years 21 She also worked as an editor and taught undergraduate classes She served on the editorial boards of the journals Paradoxa and Science Fiction Studies in addition to writing literary criticism herself 22 She taught courses at Tulane University Bennington College and Stanford University among others 21 23 In May 1983 she delivered a commencement speech entitled A Left handed Commencement Address at Mills College in Oakland California 24 It is listed as No 82 in American Rhetoric s Top 100 Speeches of the 20th Century 25 and was included in her nonfiction collection Dancing at the Edge of the World 26 Le Guin died on January 22 2018 at her home in Portland at the age of 88 Her son said that she had been in poor health for several months and stated that it was likely she had had a heart attack Private memorial services for her were held in Portland 9 27 A public memorial service which included speeches by the writers Margaret Atwood Molly Gloss and Walidah Imarisha was held in Portland on June 13 2018 28 29 Views and advocacy Edit Further information Authors Guild Inc v Google Inc I think hard times are coming when we will be wanting the voices of writers who can see alternatives to how we live now and can see through our fear stricken society and its obsessive technologies We will need writers who can remember freedom Poets visionaries the realists of a larger reality Ursula K Le Guin 30 Le Guin refused a Nebula Award for her story The Diary of the Rose in 1977 in protest at the Science Fiction Writers of America s revocation of Stanislaw Lem s membership Le Guin attributed the revocation to Lem s criticism of American science fiction and willingness to live in the Eastern Bloc and said she felt reluctant to receive an award for a story about political intolerance from a group that had just displayed political intolerance 31 32 Le Guin once said she was raised as irreligious as a jackrabbit She expressed a deep interest in Taoism and Buddhism saying that Taoism gave her a handle on how to look at life during her adolescent years 33 In 1997 she published a translation of the Tao Te Ching 33 34 In December 2009 Le Guin resigned from the Authors Guild in protest over its endorsement of Google s book digitization project You decided to deal with the devil she wrote in her resignation letter There are principles involved above all the whole concept of copyright and these you have seen fit to abandon to a corporation on their terms without a struggle 35 36 In a speech at the 2014 National Book Awards Le Guin criticized Amazon and the control it exerted over the publishing industry specifically referencing Amazon s treatment of the Hachette Book Group during a dispute over ebook publication Her speech received widespread media attention within and outside the US and was broadcast twice by National Public Radio 30 37 38 Chronology of writings EditEarly work Edit Le Guin s first published work was the poem Folksong from the Montayna Province in 1959 while her first published short story was An die Musik in 1961 both were set in her fictional country of Orsinia 39 40 Between 1951 and 1961 she also wrote five novels all set in Orsinia which were rejected by publishers on the grounds that they were inaccessible Some of her poetry from this period was published in 1975 in the volume Wild Angels 41 Le Guin turned her attention to science fiction after a lengthy period of receiving rejections from publishers knowing that there was a market for writing that could be readily classified as such 42 Her first professional publication was the short story April in Paris in 1962 in Fantastic Science Fiction 43 and seven other stories followed in the next few years in Fantastic or Amazing Stories 44 Among them were The Dowry of Angyar which introduced the fictional Hainish universe 45 and The Rule of Names and The Word of Unbinding which introduced the world of Earthsea 46 These stories were largely ignored by critics 42 Ace Books released Rocannon s World Le Guin s first published novel in 1966 Two more Hainish novels Planet of Exile and City of Illusions were published in 1966 and 1967 respectively and the three books together would come to be known as the Hainish trilogy 47 The first two were each published as half of an Ace Double two novels bound into a paperback and sold as a single low cost volume 47 City of Illusions was published as a standalone volume indicating Le Guin s growing name recognition These books received more critical attention than Le Guin s short stories with reviews being published in several science fiction magazines but the critical response was still muted 47 The books contained many themes and ideas also present in Le Guin s better known later works including the archetypal journey of a protagonist who undertakes both a physical journey and one of self discovery cultural contact and communication the search for identity and the reconciliation of opposing forces 48 When publishing her story Nine Lives in 1968 Playboy magazine asked Le Guin whether they could run the story without her full first name to which Le Guin agreed the story was published under the name U K Le Guin She later wrote that it was the first and only time she had experienced prejudice against her as a woman writer from an editor or publisher and reflected that it seemed so silly so grotesque that I failed to see that it was also important In subsequent printings the story was published under her full name 49 Critical attention Edit Le Guin s next two books brought her sudden and widespread critical acclaim A Wizard of Earthsea published in 1968 was a fantasy novel written initially for teenagers 4 Le Guin had not planned to write for young adults but was asked to write a novel targeted at this group by the editor of Parnassus Press who saw it as a market with great potential 50 51 A coming of age story set in the fictional archipelago of Earthsea the book received a positive reception in both the U S and Britain 50 52 Le Guin with Harlan Ellison at Westercon in Portland Oregon 1984 Her next novel The Left Hand of Darkness was a Hainish universe story exploring themes of gender and sexuality on a fictional planet where humans have no fixed sex 53 The book was Le Guin s first to address feminist issues 54 and according to scholar Donna White it stunned the science fiction critics it won both the Hugo and the Nebula Awards for best novel making Le Guin the first woman to win these awards and a number of other accolades 55 56 A Wizard of Earthsea and The Left Hand of Darkness have been described by critic Harold Bloom as Le Guin s masterpieces 4 She won the Hugo Award again in 1973 for The Word for World is Forest 57 The book was influenced by Le Guin s anger over the Vietnam War and explored themes of colonialism and militarism 58 59 Le Guin later described it as the most overt political statement she had made in a fictional work 57 Le Guin continued to develop themes of equilibrium and coming of age in the next two installments of the Earthsea series The Tombs of Atuan and The Farthest Shore published in 1971 and 1972 respectively 60 Both books were praised for their writing while the exploration of death as a theme in The Farthest Shore also drew praise 61 Her 1974 novel The Dispossessed again won both the Hugo and the Nebula awards for best novel making her the first person to win both awards for each of two books 62 Also set in the Hainish universe the story explored anarchism and utopianism Scholar Charlotte Spivack described it as representing a shift in Le Guin s science fiction towards discussing political ideas 63 64 Several of her speculative fiction short stories from the period including her first published story were later anthologized in the 1975 collection The Wind s Twelve Quarters 65 66 The fiction of the period 1966 to 1974 which also included The Lathe of Heaven the Hugo Award winning The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas and the Nebula Award winning The Day Before the Revolution 67 constitutes Le Guin s best known body of work 68 Wider exploration Edit Le Guin published a variety of work in the second half of the 1970s This included speculative fiction in the form of the novel The Eye of the Heron which according to Le Guin may be a part of the Hainish universe 40 69 70 She also published Very Far Away from Anywhere Else a realistic novel for adolescents 71 as well as the collection Orsinian Tales and the novel Malafrena in 1976 and 1979 respectively Though the latter two were set in the fictional country of Orsinia the stories were realistic fiction rather than fantasy or science fiction 72 The Language of the Night a collection of essays was released in 1979 73 and Le Guin also published Wild Angels a volume of poetry in 1975 74 Between 1979 when she published Malafrena and 1994 when the collection A Fisherman of the Inland Sea was released Le Guin wrote primarily for a younger audience 75 In 1985 she published the experimental work Always Coming Home 76 She wrote 11 children s picture books including the Catwings series between 1979 and 1994 along with The Beginning Place an adolescent fantasy novel released in 1980 34 75 77 Four more poetry collections were also published in this period all of which were positively received 74 75 She also revisited Earthsea publishing Tehanu in 1990 coming eighteen years after The Farthest Shore during which Le Guin s views had developed considerably the book was grimmer in tone than the earlier works in the series and challenged some ideas presented therein It received critical praise 78 won Le Guin a third Nebula Award for Best Novel 79 and led to the series being recognized among adult literature 80 Later writings Edit Le Guin returned to the Hainish Cycle in the 1990s after a lengthy hiatus with the publication of a series of short stories beginning with The Shobies Story in 1990 81 These stories included Coming of Age in Karhide 1995 which explored growing into adulthood and was set on the same planet as The Left Hand of Darkness 82 It was described by scholar Sandra Lindow as so transgressively sexual and so morally courageous that Le Guin could not have written it in the 60s 81 In the same year she published the story suite Four Ways to Forgiveness and followed it up with Old Music and the Slave Women a fifth connected story in 1999 All five of the stories explored freedom and rebellion within a slave society 83 In 2000 she published The Telling which would be her final Hainish novel and the next year released Tales from Earthsea and The Other Wind the last two Earthsea books 40 84 The latter won the World Fantasy Award for Best Novel in 2002 85 From 2002 onwards several collections and anthologies of Le Guin s work were published A series of her stories from the period 1994 2002 was released in 2002 in the collection The Birthday of the World and Other Stories along with the novella Paradises Lost 86 The volume examined unconventional ideas about gender as well as anarchist themes 87 88 89 Other collections included Changing Planes also released in 2002 while the anthologies included The Unreal and the Real 2012 40 and The Hainish Novels and Stories a two volume set of works from the Hainish universe released by the Library of America 90 Other works from this period included Lavinia 2008 based on a character from Virgil s Aeneid 91 and the Annals of the Western Shore trilogy consisting of Gifts 2004 Voices 2006 and Powers 2007 92 Although Annals of the Western Shore was written for an adolescent audience the third volume Powers received the Nebula Award for Best Novel in 2009 92 93 In her final years Le Guin largely turned away from fiction and produced a number of essays poems and some translation 5 Her final publications included the non fiction collections Dreams Must Explain Themselves and Ursula K Le Guin Conversations on Writing and the poetry volume So Far So Good Final Poems 2014 2018 all of which were released after her death 40 94 95 Style and influences EditInfluences Edit Once I learned to read I read everything I read all the famous fantasies Alice in Wonderland and Wind in the Willows and Kipling I adored Kipling s Jungle Book And then when I got older I found Lord Dunsany He opened up a whole new world the world of pure fantasy And Worm Ouroboros Again pure fantasy Very very fattening And then my brother and I blundered into science fiction when I was 11 or 12 Early Asimov things like that But that didn t have too much effect on me It wasn t until I came back to science fiction and discovered Sturgeon but particularly Cordwainer Smith I read the story Alpha Ralpha Boulevard and it just made me go Wow This stuff is so beautiful and so strange and I want to do something like that Ursula K Le Guin 96 Le Guin read both classic and speculative fiction widely in her youth She later said that science fiction did not have much impact on her until she read the works of Theodore Sturgeon and Cordwainer Smith and that she had sneered at the genre as a child 33 96 Authors Le Guin describes as influential include Victor Hugo William Wordsworth Charles Dickens Boris Pasternak and Philip K Dick Le Guin and Dick attended the same high school but did not know each other Le Guin later described her novel The Lathe of Heaven as an homage to him 14 33 97 98 She also considered J R R Tolkien and Leo Tolstoy to be stylistic influences and preferred reading Virginia Woolf and Jorge Luis Borges to well known science fiction authors such as Robert Heinlein whose writing she described as being of the white man conquers the universe tradition 99 Several scholars state that the influence of mythology which Le Guin enjoyed reading as a child is also visible in much of her work for example the short story The Dowry of Angyar is described as a retelling of a Norse myth 14 100 The discipline of cultural anthropology had a powerful influence on Le Guin s writing 101 Her father Alfred Kroeber is considered a pioneer in the field and was a director of the University of California Museum of Anthropology as a consequence of his research Le Guin was exposed to anthropology and cultural exploration as a child In addition to myths and legends she read such volumes as The Leaves of the Golden Bough by Lady Frazer a children s book adapted from The Golden Bough a study of myth and religion by her husband James George Frazer 57 101 102 103 104 She described living with her father s friends and acquaintances as giving her the experience of the other 33 The experiences of Ishi in particular were influential on Le Guin and elements of his story have been identified in works such as Planet of Exile City of Illusions and The Word for World Is Forest and The Dispossessed 57 Several scholars have commented that Le Guin s writing was influenced by Carl Jung and specifically by the idea of Jungian archetypes 105 106 In particular the shadow in A Wizard of Earthsea is seen as the Shadow archetype from Jungian psychology representing Ged s pride fear and desire for power 107 108 109 Le Guin discussed her interpretation of this archetype and her interest in the dark and repressed parts of the psyche in a 1974 lecture 108 She stated elsewhere that she had never read Jung before writing the first Earthsea books 107 108 Other archetypes including the Mother Animus and Anima have also been identified in Le Guin s writing 105 Philosophical Taoism had a large role in Le Guin s world view 110 and the influence of Taoist thought can be seen in many of her stories 111 112 Many of Le Guin s protagonists including in The Lathe of Heaven embody the Taoist ideal of leaving things alone The anthropologists of the Hainish universe try not to meddle with the cultures they encounter while one of the earliest lessons Ged learns in A Wizard of Earthsea is not to use magic unless it is absolutely necessary 112 Taoist influence is evident in Le Guin s depiction of equilibrium in the world of Earthsea the archipelago is depicted as being based on a delicate balance which is disrupted by somebody in each of the first three novels This includes an equilibrium between land and sea implicit in the name Earthsea between people and their natural environment 113 and a larger cosmic equilibrium which wizards are tasked with maintaining 114 Another prominent Taoist idea is the reconciliation of opposites such as light and dark or good and evil A number of Hainish novels The Dispossessed prominent among them explored such a process of reconciliation 115 In the Earthsea universe it is not the dark powers but the characters misunderstanding of the balance of life that is depicted as evil 116 in contrast to conventional Western stories in which good and evil are in constant conflict 117 118 Genre and style Edit Although Le Guin is primarily known for her works of speculative fiction she also wrote realistic fiction non fiction poetry and several other literary forms and as a result her work is difficult to classify 2 Her writings received critical attention from mainstream critics critics of children s literature and critics of speculative fiction 2 Le Guin herself said that she would prefer to be known as an American novelist 3 Le Guin s transgression of conventional boundaries of genre led to literary criticism of Le Guin becoming Balkanized particularly between scholars of children s literature and speculative fiction 2 Commentators have noted that the Earthsea novels specifically received less critical attention because they were considered children s books Le Guin herself took exception to this treatment of children s literature describing it as adult chauvinist piggery 2 119 In 1976 literature scholar George Slusser criticized the silly publication classification designating the original series as children s literature 120 while in Barbara Bucknall s opinion Le Guin can be read like Tolkien by ten year olds and by adults These stories are ageless because they deal with problems that confront us at any age 120 Fortunately though extrapolation is an element in science fiction it isn t the name of the game by any means It is far too rationalist and simplistic to satisfy the imaginative mind whether the writer s or the reader s Variables are the spice of life If you like you can read a lot of science fiction as a thought experiment Let s say says Mary Shelley that a young doctor creates a human being in his laboratory let s say says Philip K Dick that the Allies lost the second world war let s say this or that is such and so and see what happens In a story so conceived the moral complexity proper to the modern novel need not be sacrificed nor is there any built in dead end thought and intuition can move freely within bounds set only by the terms of the experiment which may be very large indeed Ursula K Le Guin in the introduction to the 1976 edition of The Left Hand of Darkness 121 Several of her works have a premise drawn from sociology psychology or philosophy 122 123 As a result Le Guin s writing is often described as soft science fiction and she has been described as the patron saint of this sub genre 124 125 A number of science fiction authors have objected to the term soft science fiction describing it as a potentially pejorative term used to dismiss stories not based on problems in physics astronomy or engineering and also to target the writing of women or other groups under represented in the genre 126 Le Guin suggested the term social science fiction for some of her writing while pointing out that many of her stories were not science fiction at all She argued that the term soft science fiction was divisive and implied a narrow view of what constitutes valid science fiction 15 The influence of anthropology can be seen in the setting Le Guin chose for a number of her works Several of her protagonists are anthropologists or ethnologists exploring a world alien to them 127 This is particularly true in the stories set in the Hainish universe an alternative reality in which humans did not evolve on Earth but on Hain The Hainish subsequently colonized many planets before losing contact with them giving rise to varied but related biology and social structure 57 127 Examples include Rocannon in Rocannon s World and Genly Ai in The Left Hand of Darkness Other characters such as Shevek in The Dispossessed become cultural observers in the course of their journeys on other planets 101 128 Le Guin s writing often examines alien cultures and particularly the human cultures from planets other than Earth in the Hainish universe 127 In discovering these alien worlds Le Guin s protagonists and by extension the readers also journey into themselves and challenge the nature of what they consider alien and what they consider native 129 Several of Le Guin s works have featured stylistic or structural features that were unusual or subversive The heterogeneous structure of The Left Hand of Darkness described as distinctly post modern was unusual for the time of its publication 53 This was in marked contrast to the structure of primarily male authored traditional science fiction which was straightforward and linear 130 The novel was framed as part of a report sent to the Ekumen by the protagonist Genly Ai after his time on the planet Gethen thus suggesting that Ai was selecting and ordering the material consisting of personal narration diary extracts Gethenian myths and ethnological reports 131 Earthsea also employed an unconventional narrative form described by scholar Mike Cadden as free indirect discourse in which the feelings of the protagonist are not directly separated from the narration making the narrator seem sympathetic to the characters and removing the skepticism towards a character s thoughts and emotions that are a feature of more direct narration 132 Cadden suggests that this method leads to younger readers sympathizing directly with the characters making it an effective technique for young adult literature 133 A number of Le Guin s writings including the Earthsea series challenged the conventions of epic fantasies and myths Many of the protagonists in Earthsea were dark skinned individuals in comparison to the white skinned heroes more traditionally used some of the antagonists in contrast were white skinned a switching of race roles that has been remarked upon by multiple critics 134 135 In a 2001 interview Le Guin attributed the frequent lack of character illustrations on her book covers to her choice of non white protagonists She explained this choice saying most people in the world aren t white Why in the future would we assume they are 57 Her 1985 book Always Coming Home described as her great experiment included a story told from the perspective of a young protagonist but also included poems rough drawings of plants and animals myths and anthropological reports from the matriarchal society of the Kesh a fictional people living in the Napa valley after a catastrophic global flood 40 76 Themes EditGender and sexuality Edit Gender and sexuality are prominent themes in a number of Le Guin s works The Left Hand of Darkness published in 1969 was among the first books in the genre now known as feminist science fiction and is the most famous examination of androgyny in science fiction 136 The story is set on the fictional planet of Gethen whose inhabitants are ambisexual humans with no fixed gender identity who adopt female or male sexual characteristics for brief periods of their sexual cycle 137 Which sex they adopt can depend on context and relationships 138 Gethen was portrayed as a society without war as a result of this absence of fixed gender characteristics and also without sexuality as a continuous factor in social relationships 54 137 Gethenian culture was explored in the novel through the eyes of a Terran whose masculinity proves a barrier to cross cultural communication 54 Outside the Hainish Cycle Le Guin s use of a female protagonist in The Tombs of Atuan published in 1971 was described as a significant exploration of womanhood 139 Le Guin at a reading in Danville California June 2008 Le Guin s attitude towards gender and feminism evolved considerably over time 140 Although The Left Hand of Darkness was seen as a landmark exploration of gender it also received criticism for not going far enough Reviewers pointed to its usage of masculine gender pronouns to describe its androgynous characters 53 the lack of androgynous characters portrayed in stereotypical feminine roles 141 and the portrayal of heterosexuality as the norm on Gethen 142 Le Guin s portrayal of gender in Earthsea was also described as perpetuating the notion of a male dominated world according to the Encyclopedia of Science Fiction Le Guin saw men as the actors and doers in the world while women remain the still centre the well from which they drink 40 143 144 Le Guin initially defended her writing in a 1976 essay Is Gender Necessary she wrote that gender was secondary to the primary theme of loyalty in The Left Hand of Darkness Le Guin revisited this essay in 1988 and acknowledged that gender was central to the novel 53 she also apologized for depicting Gethenians solely in heterosexual relationships 142 Le Guin responded to these critiques in her subsequent writing She intentionally used feminine pronouns for all sexually latent Gethenians in her 1995 short story Coming of Age in Karhide and in a later reprinting of Winter s King which was first published in 1969 141 145 146 Coming of Age in Karhide was later anthologized in the 2002 collection The Birthday of the World which contained six other stories featuring unorthodox sexual relationships and marital arrangements 89 She also revisited gender relations in Earthsea in Tehanu published in 1990 147 This volume was described as a rewriting or reimagining of The Tombs of Atuan because the power and status of the female protagonist Tenar are the inverse of what they were in the earlier book which was also focused on her and Ged 148 During this later period she commented that she considered The Eye of the Heron published in 1978 to be her first work genuinely centered on a woman 149 Moral development Edit Le Guin explores coming of age and moral development more broadly in many of her writings 150 This is particularly the case in those works written for a younger audience such as Earthsea and Annals of the Western Shore Le Guin wrote in a 1973 essay that she chose to explore coming of age in Earthsea since she was writing for an adolescent audience Coming of age is a process that took me many years I finished it so far as I ever will at about age thirty one and so I feel rather deeply about it So do most adolescents It s their main occupation in fact 151 She also said that fantasy was best suited as a medium for describing coming of age because exploring the subconscious was difficult using the language of rational daily life 151 152 The first three Earthsea novels together follow Ged from youth to old age and each of them also follow the coming of age of a different character 153 A Wizard of Earthsea focuses on Ged s adolescence while The Tombs of Atuan and The Farthest Shore explore that of Tenar and the prince Arren respectively 154 123 A Wizard of Earthsea is frequently described as a Bildungsroman 155 156 in which Ged s coming of age is intertwined with the physical journey he undertakes through the novel 157 To Mike Cadden the book was a convincing tale to a reader as young and possibly as headstrong as Ged and therefore sympathetic to him 156 Reviewers have described the ending of the novel wherein Ged finally accepts the shadow as a part of himself as a rite of passage Scholar Jeanne Walker writes that the rite of passage at the end was an analogue for the entire plot of A Wizard of Earthsea and that the plot itself plays the role of a rite of passage for an adolescent reader 158 159 Each volume of Annals of the Western Shore also describes the coming of age of its protagonists 160 and features explorations of being enslaved to one s own power 160 161 The process of growing up is depicted as seeing beyond narrow choices the protagonists are presented with by society In Gifts Orrec and Gry realize that the powers their people possess can be used in two ways for control and dominion or for healing and nurturing This recognition allows them to take a third choice and leave 162 This wrestling with choice has been compared to the choices the characters are forced to make in Le Guin s short story The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas 162 Similarly Ged helps Tenar in The Tombs of Atuan to value herself and to find choices that she did not see 163 164 leading her to leave the Tombs with him 165 Political systems Edit Alternative social and political systems are a recurring theme in Le Guin s writing 6 166 Critics have paid particular attention to The Dispossessed and Always Coming Home 166 although Le Guin explores related themes in a number of her works 166 such as in The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas 167 The Dispossessed is an anarchist utopian novel which according to Le Guin drew from pacifist anarchists including Peter Kropotkin as well as from the counterculture of the 1960s and 1970s 103 Le Guin has been credited with rescuing anarchism from the cultural ghetto to which it has been consigned and helping to bring it into the intellectual mainstream 168 Fellow author Kathleen Ann Goonan wrote that Le Guin s work confronted the paradigm of insularity toward the suffering of people other living beings and resources and explored life respecting sustainable alternatives 6 The Dispossessed set on the twin planets of Urras and Anarres features a planned anarchist society depicted as an ambiguous utopia The society created by settlers from Urras is materially poorer than the wealthy society of Urras but more ethically and morally advanced 169 Unlike classical utopias the society of Anarres is portrayed as neither perfect nor static the protagonist Shevek finds himself traveling to Urras to pursue his research Nonetheless the misogyny and hierarchy present in the authoritarian society of Urras is absent among the anarchists who base their social structure on cooperation and individual liberty 169 The Eye of the Heron published a few years after The Dispossessed was described as continuing Le Guin s exploration of human freedom through a conflict between two societies of opposing philosophies a town inhabited by descendants of pacifists and a city inhabited by descendants of criminals 170 Always Coming Home set in California in the distant future examines a warlike society resembling contemporary American society from the perspective of the Kesh its pacifist neighbors The society of the Kesh has been identified by scholars as a feminist utopia which Le Guin uses to explore the role of technology 171 Scholar Warren Rochelle stated that it was neither a matriarchy nor a patriarchy men and women just are 172 The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas a parable depicting a society in which widespread wealth happiness and security comes at the cost of the continued misery of a single child has also been read as a critique of contemporary American society 173 174 The Word for World is Forest explored the manner in which the structure of society affects the natural environment in the novel the natives of the planet of Athshe have adapted their way of life to the ecology of the planet 59 The colonizing human society in contrast is depicted as destructive and uncaring in depicting it Le Guin also critiqued colonialism and imperialism driven partly by her disapproval for U S intervention in the Vietnam War 58 59 175 Other social structures are examined in works such as the story cycle Four Ways to Forgiveness and the short story Old Music and the Slave Women occasionally described as a fifth way to forgiveness 176 Set in the Hainish universe the five stories together examine revolution and reconstruction in a slave owning society 177 178 According to Rochelle the stories examine a society that has the potential to build a truly human community made possible by the Ekumen s recognition of the slaves as human beings thus offering them the prospect of freedom and the possibility of utopia brought about through revolution 179 Slavery justice and the role of women in society are also explored in Annals of the Western Shore 180 181 Reception and legacy EditReception Edit Le Guin received rapid recognition after the publication of The Left Hand of Darkness in 1969 and by the 1970s she was among the best known writers in the field 2 40 Her books sold many millions of copies and were translated into more than 40 languages several remain in print many decades after their first publication 5 9 182 Her work received intense academic attention she has been described as being the premier writer of both fantasy and science fiction of the 1970s 183 the most frequently discussed science fiction writer of the 1970s 184 and over her career as intensively studied as Philip K Dick 40 Later in her career she also received recognition from mainstream literary critics in an obituary Jo Walton stated that Le Guin was so good that the mainstream couldn t dismiss SF any more 55 According to scholar Donna White Le Guin was a major voice in American letters whose writing was the subject of many volumes of literary critique more than two hundred scholarly articles and a number of dissertations 2 Le Guin was unusual in receiving most of her recognition for her earliest works which remained her most popular 99 a commentator in 2018 described a tendency toward didacticism in her later works 9 while John Clute writing in The Guardian stated that her later writing suffers from the need she clearly felt to speak responsibly to her large audience about important things an artist being responsible can be an artist wearing a crown of thorns 5 Not all of her works received as positive a reception The Compass Rose was among the volumes that had a mixed reaction while the Science Fiction Encyclopedia described The Eye of the Heron as an over diagrammatic political fable whose translucent simplicity approaches self parody 40 Even the critically well received The Left Hand of Darkness in addition to critique from feminists 185 was described by Alexei Panshin as a flat failure 53 Her writing was recognized by the popular media and by commentators The Los Angeles Times commented in 2009 that after the death of Arthur C Clarke Le Guin was arguably the most acclaimed science fiction writer on the planet and went on to describe her as a pioneer of literature for young people 99 In an obituary Clute described Le Guin as having presided over American science fiction for nearly half a century and as having a reputation as an author of the first rank 5 In 2016 The New York Times described her as America s greatest living science fiction writer 186 Praise for Le Guin frequently focused on the social and political themes her work explored 187 and for her prose literary critic Harold Bloom described Le Guin as an exquisite stylist saying that in her writing Every word was exactly in place and every sentence or line had resonance According to Bloom Le Guin was a visionary who set herself against all brutality discrimination and exploitation 6 The New York Times described her as using a lean but lyrical style to explore issues of moral relevance 9 Prefacing an interview in 2008 Vice magazine described Le Guin as having written some of the more mind warping science fiction and fantasy tales of the past 40 years 15 Le Guin s fellow authors also praised her writing After Le Guin s death in 2018 writer Michael Chabon referred to her as the greatest American writer of her generation and said that she had awed him with the power of an unfettered imagination 6 7 Author Margaret Atwood hailed Le Guin s sane smart crafty and lyrical voice and wrote that social injustice was a powerful motivation through Le Guin s life 188 Her prose according to Zadie Smith was as elegant and beautiful as any written in the twentieth century 6 Academic and author Joyce Carol Oates highlighted Le Guin s outspoken sense of justice decency and common sense and called her one of the great American writers and a visionary artist whose work will long endure 6 China Mieville described Le Guin as a literary colossus and wrote that she was a writer of intense ethical seriousness and intelligence of wit and fury of radical politics of subtlety of freedom and yearning 6 Awards and recognition Edit Le Guin at a meet the author event in 2004 The accolades Le Guin has received include numerous annual awards for individual works She won eight Hugo Awards from twenty six nominations and six Nebula Awards from eighteen nominations including four Nebula Awards for Best Novel from six nominations more than any other writer 85 189 Le Guin won twenty four Locus Awards 85 voted for by subscribers of Locus Magazine 190 and as of 2019 update was joint third for total wins as well as second behind Neil Gaiman for the number of wins for works of fiction 191 For her novels alone she won five Locus Awards four Nebula Awards two Hugo Awards and one World Fantasy Award and won each of those awards in short fiction categories as well 32 85 Her third Earthsea novel The Farthest Shore won the 1973 National Book Award for Young People s Literature 192 and she was a finalist for ten Mythopoeic Awards nine in Fantasy and one for Scholarship 85 Her 1996 collection Unlocking the Air and Other Stories was one of three finalists for the 1997 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction 193 Other awards won by Le Guin include three James Tiptree Jr Awards and three Jupiter Awards 85 She won her final Hugo award a year after her death for a complete edition of Earthsea illustrated by Charles Vess the same volume also won a Locus award 85 Other awards and accolades have recognized Le Guin s contributions to speculative fiction She was voted a Gandalf Grand Master Award by the World Science Fiction Society in 1979 85 The Science Fiction Research Association gave her its Pilgrim Award in 1989 for her lifetime contributions to SF and fantasy scholarship 85 At the 1995 World Fantasy Convention she won the World Fantasy Award for Life Achievement a judged recognition of outstanding service to the fantasy field 85 194 The Science Fiction and Fantasy Hall of Fame inducted her in 2001 its sixth class of two deceased and two living writers 195 The Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America named her its 20th Grand Master in 2003 she was the second and as of 2019 update one of only six women to receive that honor 196 197 198 In 2013 she was given the Eaton Award by the University of California Riverside for lifetime achievement in science fiction 85 199 External video Neil Gaiman presenting the Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters to Le Guin at the National Book Awards November 19 2014 C SPANLater in her career Le Guin also received accolades recognizing her contributions to literature more generally In April 2000 the U S Library of Congress named Le Guin a Living Legend in the Writers and Artists category for her significant contributions to America s cultural heritage 200 The American Library Association granted her the annual Margaret Edwards Award in 2004 and also selected her to deliver the annual May Hill Arbuthnot Lecture 201 202 The Edwards Award recognizes one writer and a particular body of work the 2004 panel cited the first four Earthsea volumes The Left Hand of Darkness and The Beginning Place The panel said that Le Guin has inspired four generations of young adults to read beautifully constructed language visit fantasy worlds that inform them about their own lives and think about their ideas that are neither easy nor inconsequential 201 A collection of Le Guin s works was published by the Library of America in 2016 an honor only rarely given to living writers 186 The National Book Foundation awarded Le Guin its Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters in 2014 stating that she had defied conventions of narrative language character and genre and transcended boundaries between fantasy and realism to forge new paths for literary fiction 203 204 The American Academy of Arts and Letters made her a member in 2017 205 On July 27 2021 Le Guin was honored by the US Postal Service with the 33rd stamp in the Postal Service s Literary Arts series The stamp features a portrait of the author taken from a 2006 photograph against a background image inspired by her book The Left Hand of Darkness The stamp was designed by Donato Gionacola 206 Legacy and influence Edit Le Guin had a considerable influence on the field of speculative fiction Jo Walton argued that Le Guin played a large role in both broadening the genre and helping genre writers achieve mainstream recognition 55 207 208 The Earthsea books are cited as having a wide impact including outside the field of literature Atwood considers A Wizard of Earthsea one of the wellsprings of fantasy literature 209 and modern writers have credited the book for the idea of a wizard school later made famous by the Harry Potter series of books 210 and with popularizing the trope of a boy wizard also present in Harry Potter 211 The notion that names can exert power is a theme in the Earthsea series critics have suggested that this inspired Hayao Miyazaki s use of the idea in his 2001 film Spirited Away 212 Neil Gaiman pictured here in 2013 is among the many authors who have acknowledged Le Guin s influence on their own writing Le Guin s writings set in the Hainish universe also had a wide influence Le Guin coined the name ansible for an instantaneous interstellar communication device in 1966 the term was later adopted by several other writers including Orson Scott Card in the Ender Series and Neil Gaiman in a script for a Doctor Who episode 213 Suzanne Reid wrote that at the time The Left Hand of Darkness was written Le Guin s ideas of androgyny were unique not only to science fiction but to literature in general 54 That volume is specifically cited as leaving a large legacy in discussing it literary critic Harold Bloom wrote Le Guin more than Tolkien has raised fantasy into high literature for our time 214 Bloom followed this up by listing the book in his The Western Canon 1994 as one of the books in his conception of artistic works that have been important and influential in Western culture 215 This view was echoed in The Paris Review which wrote that No single work did more to upend the genre s conventions than The Left Hand of Darkness 33 while White argued that it was one of the seminal works of science fiction as important as Mary Shelley s Frankenstein 1818 53 Commentators have also described Le Guin as being influential in the field of literature more generally Literary critic Elaine Showalter suggested that Le Guin set the pace as a writer for women unlearning silence fear and self doubt 6 while writer Brian Attebery stated that Le Guin invented us science fiction and fantasy critics like me but also poets and essayists and picture book writers and novelists 6 Le Guin s own literary criticism proved influential her 1973 essay From Elfland to Poughkeepsie led to renewed interest in the work of Kenneth Morris and eventually to the publication of a posthumous novel by Morris 216 Le Guin also played a role in bringing speculative fiction into the literary mainstream by supporting journalists and scholarly endeavors examining the genre 207 Several prominent authors acknowledge Le Guin s influence on their own writing Jo Walton wrote that her way of looking at the world had a huge influence on me not just as a writer but as a human being 55 Other writers she influenced include Booker Prize winner Salman Rushdie as well as David Mitchell Gaiman Algis Budrys Goonan and Iain Banks 6 33 99 Mitchell author of books such as Cloud Atlas described A Wizard of Earthsea as having a strong influence on him and said that he felt a desire to wield words with the same power as Ursula Le Guin 217 Le Guin is also credited with inspiring several female science fiction authors in the 1970s including Vonda McIntyre When McIntyre established a writers workshop in Seattle in 1971 Le Guin was one of the instructors 218 Film maker Arwen Curry began production on a documentary about Le Guin in 2009 filming dozens of hours of interviews with the author as well as many other writers and artists who have been inspired by her Curry launched a successful crowdfunding campaign to finish the documentary in early 2016 after winning a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities 219 In October 2021 the Ursula K Le Guin Prize for Fiction was announced The award is managed by the Ursula K Le Guin Literary Trust and a panel of jurors The prize is worth US 25 000 and will be awarded annually to a single book length work of imaginative fiction The inaugural shortlist was announced on July 28 2022 220 The prize s inaugural winner was announced on October 21 2022 Le Guin s birthday 221 222 Adaptations of her work Edit Le Guin s works have been adapted for radio 223 224 film television and the stage Her 1971 novel The Lathe of Heaven has been released on film twice in 1979 by WNET with Le Guin s participation and then in 2002 by the A amp E Network In a 2008 interview she said she considered the 1979 version as the only good adaptation to film of her work to date 15 In the early 1980s Hayao Miyazaki asked to create an animated adaptation of Earthsea Le Guin who was unfamiliar with his work and anime in general initially turned down the offer but later accepted after seeing My Neighbor Totoro 225 The third and fourth Earthsea books were used as the basis of Tales from Earthsea released in 2006 Rather than being directed by Hayao Miyazaki himself the film was directed by his son Gorō which disappointed Le Guin Le Guin was positive about the aesthetic of the film writing that much of it was beautiful but was critical of the film s moral sense and its use of physical violence and particularly the use of a villain whose death provided the film s resolution 225 In 2004 the Sci Fi Channel adapted the first two books of the Earthsea trilogy as the miniseries Legend of Earthsea Le Guin was highly critical of the miniseries calling it a far cry from the Earthsea I envisioned objecting to the use of white actors for her red brown and black skinned characters 226 Le Guin s novel The Left Hand of Darkness was adapted for the stage in 1995 by Chicago s Lifeline Theatre Reviewer Jack Helbig at the Chicago Reader wrote that the adaptation is intelligent and well crafted but ultimately unsatisfying in large measure because it is extremely difficult to compress a complex 300 page novel into a two hour stage presentation 227 Paradises Lost was adapted into an opera by the opera program of the University of Illinois 228 229 The opera was composed by Stephen A Taylor 228 the libretto has been attributed both to Kate Gale 230 and to Marcia Johnson 228 Created in 2005 230 the opera premiered in April 2012 231 Le Guin described the effort as a beautiful opera in an interview and expressed hopes that it would be picked up by other producers She also said she was better pleased with stage versions including Paradises Lost than screen adaptations of her work to that date 229 In 2013 the Portland Playhouse and Hand2Mouth Theatre produced a play based on The Left Hand of Darkness directed and adapted by Jonathan Walters with text written by John Schmor The play opened May 2 2013 and ran until June 16 2013 in Portland Oregon 232 Bibliography EditMain article Ursula K Le Guin bibliography Le Guin signing a book in 2013 Le Guin s career as a professional writer spanned nearly sixty years from 1959 to 2018 During this period she wrote more than twenty novels more than a hundred short stories more than a dozen volumes of poetry five translations and thirteen children s books 9 205 Her writing encompassed speculative fiction realistic fiction non fiction screenplays librettos essays poetry speeches translations literary critiques chapbooks and children s fiction Le Guin s first published work was the poem Folksong from the Montayna Province in 1959 while her first published short story was An die Musik in 1961 Her first professional publication was the short story April in Paris in 1962 while her first published novel was Rocannon s World released by Ace Books in 1966 39 40 43 233 Her final publications included the non fiction collections Dreams Must Explain Themselves and Ursula K Le Guin Conversations on Writing both released after her death 40 94 Her best known works include the six volumes of the Earthsea series and the many novels of the Hainish Cycle 40 234 See also EditList of American novelists List of fantasy authors List of science fiction authorsCitations Edit Le Guin Ursula How to Pronounce Me Archived from the original on March 6 2014 Retrieved March 22 2014 a b c d e f g White 1999 pp 1 2 a b Phillips Julie December 2012 Ursula K Le Guin American Novelist Bookslut Archived from the original on January 20 2017 Retrieved September 13 2016 a b c d White 1999 p 2 a b c d e Clute John January 24 2018 Ursula K Le Guin obituary The Guardian Archived from the original on November 9 2019 Retrieved February 28 2019 a b c d e f g h i j k Fellow writers remember Ursula K Le Guin 1929 2018 Library of America January 26 2018 Archived from the original on January 27 2020 Retrieved March 5 2019 a b Chabon Michael November 20 2019 Le Guin s Subversive Imagination The Paris Review Archived from the original on December 24 2019 Retrieved November 24 2019 a b Spivack 1984 p 1 a b c d e f Jonas Gerald January 23 2018 Ursula K Le Guin Acclaimed for Her Fantasy Fiction Is Dead at 88 The New York Times Archived from the original on January 23 2018 Retrieved January 23 2018 a b c d e Cummins 1990 p 2 Hallowell A Irving 1962 Theodora Kroeber Ishi in Two Worlds A Biography of the Last Wild Indian in North America The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 340 1 164 165 doi 10 1177 000271626234000162 S2CID 145429704 a b c d Spivack 1984 p 2 Kroeber Theodora 1970 Alfred Kroeber a Personal Configuration University of California Press p 287 ISBN 978 0 520 01598 2 a b c Spivack 1984 pp 2 3 a b c d Lafreniere Steve December 2008 Ursula K Le Guin Vice Archived from the original on July 9 2011 Retrieved April 22 2010 Cummins 1990 p 3 a b Reid 1997 p 5 a b c d e f Spivack 1984 p 3 a b Reid 1997 pp 5 7 Brown Jeremy K November 2013 Timeline Ursula K Le Guin Infobase Learning ISBN 978 1 4381 4937 0 a b c Ursula K Le Guin 1929 2018 Locus Magazine January 23 2018 Archived from the original on October 1 2018 Retrieved September 17 2018 White 1999 pp 1 3 Walsh William Le Guin Ursula K Summer 1995 I Am a Woman Writer I Am a Western Writer An Interview with Ursula Le Guin The Kenyon Review 17 3 192 205 Le Guin Ursula K May 22 1983 A Left Handed Commencement Address American Rhetoric Archived from the original on October 29 2015 Retrieved October 27 2015 Eidenmuller Michael E February 13 2009 Top 100 Speeches of the 20th Century by Rank American Rhetoric Archived from the original on October 27 2015 Retrieved October 27 2015 Le Guin Ursula K 1989 Dancing at the Edge of the World Grove Press p v ISBN 978 0 8021 3529 2 Woodall Bernie January 23 2018 U S author Ursula K Le Guin dies at 88 family Reuters Archived from the original on September 17 2018 Retrieved September 16 2018 Ursula K Le Guin Tribute Locus Magazine April 20 2018 Archived from the original on September 17 2018 Retrieved September 16 2018 Baer April June 9 2018 Remembering Ursula K Le Guin Oregon Public Broadcasting Archived from the original on September 17 2018 Retrieved September 16 2018 a b DeNies Ramona November 20 2014 Ursula K Le Guin Burns Down the National Book Awards Portland Monthly Archived from the original on December 7 2014 Le Guin Ursula December 6 2017 The Literary Prize for the Refusal of Literary Prizes The Paris Review Archived from the original on January 21 2020 Retrieved December 25 2018 a b Dugdale John May 21 2016 How to turn down a prestigious literary prize a winner s guide to etiquette The Guardian Archived from the original on December 25 2018 Retrieved December 25 2018 a b c d e f g Wray John Fall 2013 Interviews Ursula K Le Guin The Art of Fiction No 221 The Paris Review 206 Archived from the original on November 11 2014 Retrieved November 11 2014 a b Bernardo amp Murphy 2006 p 170 Flood Alison December 24 2009 Le Guin accuses Authors Guild of deal with the devil The Guardian Archived from the original on May 8 2014 Retrieved May 27 2010 Ursula K Le Guin has resigned from the writers organisation in protest at settlement with Google over digitisation Le Guin Ursula K December 18 2009 My letter of resignation from the Authors Guild Archived from the original on January 11 2012 Retrieved January 10 2012 Bausells Marta June 3 2015 Ursula K Le Guin launches broadside on Amazon s sell it fast sell it cheap policy The Guardian Archived from the original on April 19 2019 Retrieved December 22 2018 Brown Mark July 25 2014 Writers unite in campaign against thuggish Amazon The Guardian Archived from the original on December 22 2018 Retrieved December 22 2018 a b Attebery Brian Ursula K Le Guin The Complete Orsinia Library of America Archived from the original on January 27 2020 Retrieved February 12 2018 a b c d e f g h i j k l m Nicholls amp Clute 2019 Reid 1997 p 6 a b White 1999 p 45 a b Erlich 2009 p 25 White 1999 pp 45 123 Cummins 1990 p 68 Cadden 2005 pp 80 81 a b c White 1999 pp 44 45 Spivack 1984 p 9 Le Guin 1978 p 128 a b White 1999 p 10 Cadden 2005 p xi Cummins 1990 pp 8 22 a b c d e f White 1999 pp 45 50 a b c d Reid 1997 pp 51 56 a b c d Walton Jo January 24 2018 Bright the Hawk s Flight on the Empty Sky Ursula K Le Guin Tor com Archived from the original on September 19 2018 Retrieved September 19 2018 White 1999 pp 45 50 54 a b c d e f Justice Faith L January 23 2001 Ursula K Le Guin Salon Archived from the original on November 3 2012 Retrieved April 22 2010 a b Spivack 1984 pp 70 71 a b c Cummins 1990 pp 87 90 Spivack 1984 pp 26 27 White 1999 pp 14 15 Freedman Carl ed 2008 Conversations with Ursula K Le Guin University Press of Mississippi p xxiii Spivack 1984 pp 74 75 White 1999 pp 46 47 Spivack 1984 p 94 Le Guin 1978 p 31 White 1999 pp 50 54 Cummins 1990 p 4 Spivack 1984 pp 109 116 White 1999 p 124 Spivack 1984 p 106 Spivack 1984 pp 100 114 Spivack 1984 p 125 a b White 1999 p 111 a b c Cadden 2005 pp 114 115 a b Cadden 2005 pp 115 116 Spivack 1984 pp 116 117 White 1999 pp 107 111 Nebula Awards Winners By Category Science Fiction Awards Database Locus Science Fiction Foundation Retrieved August 17 2021 Cadden 2005 pp 80 81 97 a b Lindow Sandra J January 2018 The Dance of Nonviolent Subversion in Le Guin s Hainish Cycle The New York Review of Science Fiction 345 Archived from the original on September 28 2018 Retrieved September 27 2018 Thomas P L 2013 Science Fiction and Speculative Fiction Challenging Genres Springer Science amp Business Media p 89 ISBN 978 94 6209 380 5 Archived from the original on February 3 2021 Retrieved August 16 2019 Cadden 2005 pp 37 38 Sacks Sam November 17 2017 Review The Works of Ursula K Le Guin Sublime World Builder The Wall Street Journal Archived from the original on September 28 2018 Retrieved September 27 2018 a b c d e f g h i j k Ursula K Le Guin Science Fiction Awards Database Locus Magazine Archived from the original on July 21 2019 Retrieved February 26 2019 Feeley Gregory April 7 2002 Past Forward The Washington Post Archived from the original on August 28 2017 Retrieved August 20 2017 Atwood Margaret September 26 2002 The Queen of Quinkdom The New York Review of Books Archived from the original on February 2 2017 Retrieved January 2 2017 Haiven Max 2015 One Who Choosing Accepts the Responsibility of Choice Ursula K Le Guin Anarchism and Authority In Shantz Jeff ed Specters of Anarchy Literature and the Anarchist Imagination Algora Publishing pp 169 200 ISBN 978 1 62894 141 8 Archived from the original on February 3 2021 Retrieved November 13 2020 a b Lindow 2012 p 205 Nordling Em September 18 2017 A Definitive Collection that Defies Definition Le Guin s Hainish Novels amp Stories Tor com Archived from the original on September 28 2018 Retrieved September 27 2018 Higgins Charlotte May 22 2009 The princess with flaming hair The Guardian Archived from the original on September 28 2018 Retrieved September 28 2018 a b Walton Jo April 29 2009 A new island of stability Ursula Le Guin s Annals of the Western Shore Tor com Archived from the original on April 19 2017 Retrieved April 17 2017 Nebula Awards 2009 Science Fiction Awards Database Locus Archived from the original on September 28 2015 Retrieved December 6 2011 a b Scurr Ruth March 14 2018 Dreams Must Explain Themselves by Ursula K Le Guin review writing and the feminist fellowship The Guardian Archived from the original on August 11 2018 Retrieved September 28 2018 McCabe Vinton Rafe So Far So Good Final Poems 2014 2018 New York Journal of Books Archived from the original on August 22 2019 Retrieved August 22 2019 a b Wilson Mark Interview Ursula K Le Guin About com Sci Fi Fantasy Archived from the original on November 18 2012 A Wizard of Earthsea Reader s Guide About the Author The Big Read National Endowment for the Arts May 25 2017 Archived from the original on April 14 2012 Ursula K Le Guin Still Battling the Powers That Be WIRED July 25 2014 Archived from the original on November 11 2014 Retrieved November 11 2014 a b c d Timberg Scott May 10 2009 Ursula K Le Guin s work still resonates with readers Los Angeles Times Archived from the original on March 7 2012 Retrieved June 5 2012 White 1999 p 71 a b c Spivack 1984 pp 4 5 Leaves from the Golden Bough Nature 114 2876 854 855 December 13 1924 Bibcode 1924Natur 114R 854 doi 10 1038 114854b0 S2CID 4110636 a b Chronicles of Earthsea Edited Transcript of Le Guin s Online Q amp A The Guardian February 9 2004 Archived from the original on October 2 2013 Retrieved November 10 2013 Ackerman Robert 1987 J G Frazer His Life and Work Cambridge University Press p 124 ISBN 978 0 521 34093 9 Archived from the original on February 3 2021 Retrieved August 29 2019 a b Spivack 1984 pp 5 6 White 1999 pp 12 17 a b Cummins 1990 pp 28 29 a b c White 1999 p 17 Bernardo amp Murphy 2006 pp 100 103 White 1999 p 24 White 1999 pp 88 89 a b Spivack 1984 pp 6 8 Cummins 1990 pp 9 10 Cummins 1990 pp 25 26 White 1999 pp 51 55 Slusser 1976 pp 31 36 Cummins 1990 pp 33 34 White 1999 p 18 Esmonde Margaret P 1981 The Good Witch of the West Children s Literature The Johns Hopkins University Press 9 185 190 doi 10 1353 chl 0 0112 a b Cadden 2005 p 96 Le Guin Ursula K 1976 The Left Hand of Darkness Ace Books pp i ii ISBN 978 0 441 47812 5 Cadden 2005 pp 1 2 a b Spivack Charlotte 1984 Only in Dying Life The Dynamics of Old Age in the Fiction of Ursula Le Guin Modern Language Studies 14 3 43 53 doi 10 2307 3194540 JSTOR 3194540 Landon Brooks 2014 Science Fiction After 1900 From the Steam Man to the Stars Taylor amp Francis p 177 ISBN 978 1 136 76118 8 Archived from the original on February 3 2021 Retrieved December 22 2018 McGuirk Carol July 1994 NoWhere Man Towards a Poetics of Post Utopian Characterization Science Fiction Studies 21 2 141 154 JSTOR 4240329 Wilde Fran February 20 2017 Ten Authors on the Hard vs Soft Science Fiction Debate Tor com Archived from the original on December 29 2018 Retrieved December 22 2018 a b c Cummins 1990 pp 5 66 67 Cummins 1990 pp 12 13 Cummins 1990 p 5 Reid 1997 pp 20 25 Cummins 1990 pp 76 81 Cadden 2005 p 92 Cadden 2005 pp 92 93 Kuznets 1985 Bernardo amp Murphy 2006 p 92 Reid Robin Anne ed 2009 Women in Science Fiction and Fantasy Entries Vol 2 Greenwood Press pp 9 120 ISBN 978 0 313 33589 1 a b Cummins 1990 pp 74 77 Spivack 1984 pp 44 50 Cummins 1990 p 171 Lothian 2006 pp 380 383 a b 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Children s Literature in Education 34 3 183 193 doi 10 1023 A 1025390102089 S2CID 160303057 Cadden Mike 2006 Taking Different Roads to the City The Development of Ursula K Le Guin s Young Adult Novels Extrapolation 47 3 427 444 doi 10 3828 extr 2006 47 3 7 Cummins 1990 p 24 a b Cummins 1990 p 22 Tymn 1981 p 30 Cummins 1990 p 9 Cadden 2005 p 80 Bernardo amp Murphy 2006 p 97 a b Cadden 2005 p 91 Bernardo amp Murphy 2006 p 99 Cadden 2005 pp 99 100 White 1999 pp 34 35 a b Lindow Sandra J 2006 Wild Gifts Anger management and moral development in the fiction of Ursula K Le Guin and Maurice Sendak Extrapolation 47 3 453 454 doi 10 3828 extr 2006 47 3 8 Covarr Fiona 2015 Hybridity Third Spaces and Identities in Ursula Le Guin s Voices Mousaion 33 2 129 doi 10 25159 0027 2639 179 a b Rochelle Warren G 2006 Choosing to be Human American romantic pragmatic rhetoric in Ursula K Le Guin s teaching novel Gifts Extrapolation 48 1 88 91 Bernardo amp Murphy 2006 pp 109 110 Cummins 1990 pp 38 39 Cummins 1990 p 49 a b c White 1999 pp 81 83 Rochelle 2008 pp 414 415 Call Lewis 2007 Postmodern Anarchism in the Novels of Ursula K Le Guin SubStance 13 36 Archived from the original on September 30 2013 Retrieved November 25 2013 a b White 1999 pp 86 89 Rochelle 2008 p 415 White 1999 pp 96 100 Rochelle 2008 pp 415 416 Spivack 1984 p 159 Rochelle 2008 p 414 Reid 1997 pp 58 60 Cadden 2005 p 38 Lindow Sandra J April 29 2018 The Dance of Nonviolent Subversion in Le Guin s Hainish Cycle The New York Review of Science Fiction 346 Archived from the original on September 28 2018 Retrieved May 8 2018 Rochelle 2001 p 153 Rochelle 2001 pp 159 160 Oziewicz Marek C 2011 Restorative Justice Scripts in Ursula K Le Guin s Voices Children s Literature in Education 42 33 43 doi 10 1007 s10583 010 9118 8 S2CID 145122571 Nordling Em October 28 2016 Farsickness Homesickness in The Found and the Lost by Ursula K Le Guin Tor com Archived from the original on January 21 2017 Retrieved January 2 2017 Iannuzzi Giulia 2019 Un laboratorio di fantastici libri Riccardo Valla intellettuale editore traduttore Con un appendice di lettere inedite a cura di Luca G Manenti in Italian Solfanelli pp 93 102 ISBN 978 88 3305 103 1 Tymn 1981 p 363 Pringle David 2014 Science Fiction The 100 Best Novels Orion Publishing Group Chapter 60 ISBN 978 1 4732 0807 0 Archived from the original on August 11 2020 Retrieved February 27 2019 White 1999 p 5 a b Streitfeld David August 28 2016 Ursula Le Guin Has Earned a Rare Honor Just Don t Call Her a Sci Fi Writer The New York Times Archived from the original on September 28 2017 Booker M Keith Thomas Anne Marie 2009 The Science Fiction Handbook John Wiley amp Sons pp 159 160 ISBN 978 1 4443 1035 1 Archived from the original on July 5 2019 Retrieved March 1 2019 Atwood Margaret January 24 2018 Margaret Atwood We lost Ursula Le Guin when we needed her most The Washington Post Archived from the original on March 7 2019 Retrieved March 5 2019 Troughton R K May 14 2014 Nebula Awards by the Numbers Amazing Stories Archived from the original on January 27 2020 Retrieved August 19 2019 Nicholls Peter Clute John Sleight Graham eds April 7 2018 Locus Award The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction Gollancz Archived from the original on February 27 2019 Retrieved February 26 2019 Locus Awards Tallies Science Fiction Awards Database Locus Magazine Archived from the original on August 1 2019 Retrieved February 26 2019 National Book Awards 1973 National Book Foundation Archived from the original on September 22 2008 Retrieved February 21 2012 Fiction Finalists The Pulitzer Prizes Archived from the original on May 30 2014 Retrieved May 15 2018 Award Winners and Nominees World Fantasy Convention Archived from the original on December 1 2010 Retrieved February 4 2011 2001 Inductees Science Fiction and Fantasy Hall of Fame Mid American Science Fiction and Fantasy Conventions Inc Archived from the original on May 21 2013 Retrieved April 24 2013 This was the official website of the hall of fame to 2004 Damon Knight Memorial Grand Master Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America SFWA Archived from the original on July 1 2011 Retrieved April 24 2013 Brooks Katherine January 25 2018 The Night Ursula K Le Guin Pranked The Patriarchy Huffington Post Archived from the original on February 26 2019 Retrieved February 27 2019 SFWA Grand Master Award Science Fiction Awards Database Locus Magazine Archived from the original on July 3 2019 Retrieved February 27 2019 Nicholls Peter Clute John Sleight Graham eds April 7 2018 Eaton Award The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction Gollancz Archived from the original on February 27 2019 Retrieved February 26 2019 Ursula Leguin Living Legends Library of Congress Archived from the original on January 24 2018 a b 2004 Margaret A Edwards Award Winner American Library Association Young Adult Library Services Association Archived from the original on October 19 2013 The May Hill Arbuthnot Honor Lecture Award American Library Association Association for Library Service to Children Archived from the original on April 1 2013 Retrieved March 18 2013 The 2014 Medalist for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters National Book Foundation Archived from the original on September 13 2014 Baker Jeff September 9 2014 Ursula K Le Guin wins big honor from National Book Foundation Oregon Live Archived from the original on September 10 2014 Retrieved September 9 2014 a b Blumberg Antonia January 1 2018 Beloved Fantasy Author Ursula Le Guin Dead at 88 Huffington Post Archived from the original on February 8 2019 Retrieved March 1 2019 Acker Lizzy July 27 2021 Portland literary icon Ursula K Le Guin gets a Forever stamp Oregon Live The Oregonian Retrieved August 27 2021 a b White 1999 pp 3 4 Cadden 2005 pp xi xiv 140 145 Russell Anna October 16 2014 Margaret Atwood Chooses A Wizard of Earthsea The Wall Street Journal Archived from the original on January 3 2015 Retrieved November 10 2014 Craig Amanda September 24 2003 Classic of the month A Wizard of Earthsea The Guardian Archived from the original on November 11 2014 Retrieved November 10 2014 Power Ed July 31 2016 Harry Potter and the boy wizard tradition Irish Times Archived from the original on August 2 2016 Retrieved September 13 2016 Reider Noriko T 2005 Spirited Away Film of the fantastic and evolving Japanese folk symbols Film Criticism 29 3 4 Nicholls Peter Clute John Sleight Graham eds April 7 2018 Ansible The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction Gollancz Archived from the original on February 28 2019 Retrieved February 26 2019 Bloom 1987 Bloom Harold 2014 The Western Canon Houghton Mifflin Harcourt p 564 ISBN 978 0 547 54648 3 White 1999 pp 16 17 Kerridge Jake November 17 2015 The fantasy that inspired David Mitchell The Telegraph Archived from the original on January 29 2020 Retrieved September 13 2016 Holland Steve April 4 2019 Vonda N McIntyre obituary The Guardian Archived from the original on March 29 2020 Retrieved May 7 2020 Flood 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Archived from the original on December 19 2014 Retrieved April 22 2015 a b c Paradises Lost adapted from the novella by Ursula K Le Guin Playwrights Guild of Canada Archived from the original on January 9 2017 Retrieved January 2 2017 a b Interview Ursula K Le Guin Lightspeed Magazine October 2012 Archived from the original on January 29 2020 Retrieved January 2 2017 a b Axelrod Jeremy Phantoms of the Opera Poetry Foundation Archived from the original on February 3 2017 Retrieved February 2 2017 UI Opera to Premiere New Opera by Stephen Taylor University of Illinois School of Music April 19 2012 Archived from the original on August 21 2013 Retrieved April 27 2013 Hughley Marty May 5 2013 Theater review The Left Hand of Darkness finds deeply human love on a cold blue world Oregon Live Archived from the original on November 4 2013 Retrieved November 1 2013 White 1999 pp 9 123 White 1999 p 1 Sources EditBernardo Susan M Murphy Graham J 2006 Ursula K Le Guin A Critical Companion Greenwood Press ISBN 978 0 313 33225 8 Bloom Harold 1987 Introduction In Bloom Harold ed Modern Critical Interpretations Ursula Le Guin s The Left Hand of Darkness Chelsea House Publications pp 1 10 ISBN 978 1 55546 064 8 Cadden Mike 2005 Ursula K Le Guin Beyond Genre Fiction for Children and Adults Routledge ISBN 978 0 415 99527 6 Cummins Elizabeth 1990 Understanding Ursula K Le Guin University of South Carolina Press ISBN 978 0 87249 687 3 Erlich Richard D December 2009 Coyote s Song The Teaching Stories of Ursula K Le Guin Wildside Press LLC ISBN 978 1 4344 5775 2 Archived from the original on February 3 2021 Retrieved September 18 2018 Kuznets Lois R 1985 High Fantasy in America A Study of Lloyd Alexander Ursula Le Guin and Susan Cooper The Lion and the Unicorn 9 19 35 doi 10 1353 uni 0 0075 S2CID 143248850 Le Guin Ursula 1978 The Wind s Twelve Quarters Volume I Granada Publishing ISBN 978 0 586 04623 4 Lindow Sandra J 2012 Dancing the Tao Le Guin and Moral Development Cambridge Scholars Publishing ISBN 978 1 4438 4302 7 Lothian Alexis 2006 Grinding Axes and Balancing Oppositions The Transformation of Feminisms in Ursula K Le Guin s Science Fiction Extrapolation 47 3 380 395 doi 10 3828 extr 2006 47 3 4 Nicholls Peter Clute John Sleight Graham eds April 7 2018 Le Guin Ursula K The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction Gollancz Archived from the original on April 26 2018 Retrieved May 7 2018 Reid Suzanne Elizabeth 1997 Presenting Ursula Le Guin Twayne ISBN 978 0 8057 4609 9 Rochelle Warren 2001 Communities of the Heart The Rhetoric of Myth in the Fiction of Ursula K Le Guin Liverpool University Press ISBN 978 0 85323 876 8 Rochelle Warren G 2008 Ursula K Le Guin A Companion to Science Fiction John Wiley amp Sons pp 408 419 ISBN 978 1 4051 4458 2 Archived from the original on July 7 2014 Retrieved November 13 2020 Slusser George Edgar 1976 The Farthest Shores of Ursula K Le Guin Wildside Press LLC ISBN 978 0 89370 205 2 Spivack Charlotte 1984 Ursula K Le Guin Twayne Publishers ISBN 978 0 8057 7393 4 Tymn Marshall B 1981 The Science fiction reference book Starmont House ISBN 978 0 916732 49 3 White Donna 1999 Dancing with Dragons Ursula K Le Guin and the Critics Camden House ISBN 978 1 57113 034 1 Further reading EditBloom Harold ed 2000 Ursula K Leguin Modern Critical Views Chelsea House Publications ISBN 978 0 87754 659 7 Cart Michael 1996 From Romance to Realism 50 Years of Growth and Change in Young Adult Literature Harper Collins ISBN 978 0 06 024289 3 Archived from the original on February 3 2021 Retrieved September 14 2018 Davis Laurence Stillman Peter 2005 The New Utopian Politics of Ursula K Le Guin s The Dispossessed Lexington Books ISBN 978 0 7391 5820 3 Archived from the original on February 3 2021 Retrieved September 14 2018 Egoff Sheila A 1988 Worlds within children s fantasy from the Middle Ages to today American Library Association ISBN 978 0 8389 0494 7 Lehr Susan S ed 1995 Battling Dragons Issues and Controversy in Children s Literature Greenwood Publishing Group Incorporated ISBN 978 0 435 08828 6 Archived from the original on February 3 2021 Retrieved September 14 2018 Reginald Robert Slusser George eds 1997 Zephyr and Boreas Winds of Change in the Fictions of Ursula K Le Guin Borgo Press ISBN 978 0 916732 78 3 Trites Roberta Seelinger 2000 Disturbing the universe power and repression in adolescent literature University of Iowa Press ISBN 978 0 87745 857 9 Wayne Kathryn Ross 1996 Redefining moral education life Le Guin and language Austin amp Winfield ISBN 978 1 880921 85 2 Archived from the original on February 3 2021 Retrieved September 14 2018 External links Edit Wikimedia Commons has media related to Ursula K Le Guin Wikiquote has quotations related to Ursula K Le Guin Official website Worlds of Ursula K Le Guin PBS American Masters August 2 2019 Ursula K Le Guin papers circa 1930s 2018 at the University of Oregon LibrariesInterviews Edit An audio interview with Ursula K Le Guin MP3 format from Hour 25 Jaggi Maya December 17 2005 The Magician The Guardian Oregon Art Beat Author Ursula Le Guin OPB FM Ursula Le Guin Bookworm Interviews Audio with Michael Silverblatt January 1992 March 2001 Mythmakers and Lawbreakers dialogues Speeches Edit Ursula K Le Guin s speech at National Book Awards Books aren t just commodities The Guardian November 20 2014 Ursula K Le Guin on speaking truth to power at National Book Awards Los Angeles Times November 20 2014 Portals Children s literature Speculative fiction Literature Feminism Retrieved from https en wikipedia org w index php title Ursula K Le Guin amp oldid 1138296035, wikipedia, wiki, book, books, library,

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