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Ursula Kroeber Le Guin (born October 21, 1929), is an American author. While she has
written novels, poetry, childen's books, and essays, she is best known for her science fiction and fantasy, which she has written in the form
of novels and short stories. Le Guin has lived in Portland,
Oregon since 1958.
First published in the 1960s, she is now regarded as one of the best science fiction
authors. She has received several Hugo and Nebula awards, and was awarded the Gandalf Grand
Master award in 1979 and the Science Fiction and
Fantasy Writers of America Grand Master Award in 2003. The daughter of the anthropologist Alfred L. Kroeber and the
writer Theodora Kroeber,
Le Guin is noted for her exploration of Taoist, anarchist, feminist, psychological, and sociological themes and for her exemplary
style.
Her interests in literature manifested themselves early. At the age of 11, she submitted her first story to Astounding Science Fiction (it was not accepted.) She
attended Harvard University's Radcliffe College, then Columbia
University, graduating with an M.A. She later studied in
France, where she met her husband, Charles Le Guin. Her earliest writings (little of
which were published at the time, but some of which resurfaced in altered form years later in Orsinian Tales and Malafrena), were
nonfantastic stories of imaginary countries. Searching for a
publishable way to express her interests, she re-awakened her interest in science fiction, beginning to publish regularly in the
early 1960s. She became notable with the publication of her 1969 novel The Left Hand of Darkness, which won the Hugo and Nebula awards.
Much of Le Guin's science fiction work is distinguished from other examples of the genre by its strong emphasis on the
'social' sciences, including sociology and anthropology. Her works often make use of unusual alien cultures to convey a message about our own culture;
one example is the exploration of sexual identity via the
gender-shifting natives of The Left Hand of
Darkness.
Le Guin is known for her ability to create believable worlds populated by deeply human characters (regardless of whether they
are technically 'human'). Her fantasy works (such as the Earthsea books)
are much more focused on the human condition than are works by
authors such as J. R. R. Tolkien. Le Guin has also written fiction
set much closer to home; many of her short stories are set in our world in the present or the near future.
Her fiction includes:
- The Earthsea short stories
- "The Word of Unbinding" (in The Wind's Twelve Quarters)
- "The Rule of Names" (in The Wind's Twelve Quarters)
- "Dragonfly" (in Legends, ed. Robert Silverberg; also in Tales
from Earthsea)
- Tales from Earthsea, short story collection,
2001, ISBN 0151005613
- Short stories from the Ekumen
- Four Ways to Forgiveness (Four Stories
of the Ekumen)
- "Old Music and the Slave Woman" (found in Far Horizons, ed. Robert Silverberg; also
in The Birthday of the World)
- Miscellaneous novels and story cycles
- Always Coming Home
- The Lathe of
Heaven (made into TV movies, 1980 and 2002)
- Malafrena
- The Eye of
the Heron
- Short story collections:
- The Compass
Rose
- A Fisherman of the Inland
Sea
- Worlds of Exile and Illusion (omnibus)
- The Wind's Twelve Quarters
- Unlocking the Air and Other Stories
- Orsinian Tales
- The Birthday of the World, 2002,
ISBN 0066212537
- Four Ways to Forgiveness
- Changing
Planes, 2003, ISBN
0151009716
- Children's and YA books:
- The
Catwings Collection
- Catwings
- Catwings Return
- Wonderful Alexander and the Catwings
- Jane on Her Own
- Fish Soup
- A Ride on the Red Mare's Back
- Very Far Away from Anywhere Else
Le Guin has also published nonfiction, poetry, and some translations.
- Nonfiction:
- The Language of the Night
- Dancing at the Edge of the World
- Steering the
Craft (about writing)
- Poetry:
- Wild Oats and Fireweed
- Going Out with Peacocks and Other Poems
- Translations:
- Lao Tzu : Tao Te
Ching, a Book about the Way & the Power of the Way (a translation and commentary)
- Kalpa Imperial, from Angélica Gorodischer's Spanish original.
- Selected Poems of Gabriela Mistral, from Gabriela
Mistral's Spanish originals.
- See also: The Ones
Who Walk Away From Omelas
Le Guin is a prolific author and has published many works that are not listed here. Many works were originally published in
science fiction literary magazines. Those that have not since been anthologized have fallen into obscurity.
Pronunciation
In a February 2004 on-line Q&A session organized by The Guardian, Le Guin was asked whether she pronounced her surname the French
way or as most of her English-speaking fans did ("Luh Gwinn"). Her reply was Taoist in its duality: "Een zees country we say Luh
Gwinn. En France nous disons Le Guin, comme le vin or le gain." [1]
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