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'Ursula Kroeber Le Guin' [] (born October 21, 1929) is an American author. She has written novels, poetry, children's books, essays, and short stories, most notably in the fantasy and science fiction genres.
She was first published in the 1960s. Her works explore Taoist, anarchist, feminist, psychological and sociological themes. 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.

Contents

Biography

Themes

Fiction

Miscellaneous novels and story cycles

Short story collections

Books for children and young adults

★ ''Gifts'', 2004 ★ ''Voices'', 2006 ★ ''Powers'', (September 1, 2007)

Nonfiction

Prose

Poetry

Translations and Renditions

Adaptations to film and television

Additional awards

Scholarship

References

External links

Biography

Le Guin was born and raised in Berkeley, California, the daughter of the anthropologist Alfred L. Kroeber and the writer Theodora Kroeber. Her father was granted the first Ph.D. in Anthropology in the United States in 1901 (Columbia University). She became interested in literature when she was very young. At the age of eleven she submitted her first story to the magazine ''Astounding Science Fiction'' (it was rejected).
She received her B.A. (''Phi Beta Kappa'') from Radcliffe College in 1951, and M.A. from Columbia University in 1952. She later studied in France, where she met her husband, historian Charles Le Guin. They were married in 1953.
Her earliest writings (little published at the time, but some appeared in adapted form much later in ''Orsinian Tales'' and ''Malafrena''), were non-fantastic stories of imaginary countries. Searching for a publishable way to express her interests, she returned to her early interest in science fiction and began to be published regularly in the early 1960s. She became famous after the publication of her 1969 novel ''The Left Hand of Darkness'', which won the Hugo and Nebula awards.
Le Guin has lived in Portland, Oregon since 1958. She has three children and four grandchildren.

Themes

Much of Le Guin's science fiction places a strong emphasis on the social sciences, including sociology and anthropology, thus placing it in the subcategory known as soft science fiction. Her writing often makes use of unusual alien cultures to convey a message about our own culture; one example is the exploration of sexual identity through the hermaphroditic race in ''The Left Hand of Darkness'', which forms an important plank in the canon of feminist science fiction.
A number of Le Guin's science fiction works, including her award-winning novels ''The Dispossessed'' and ''The Left Hand of Darkness'', are set in a future, post-Imperial galactic civilization loosely connected by a co-operative body known as the Ekumen. The Ekumen is very specifically not in any sense a governing body, but rather a conduit for the exchange of information, goods, and mutual cultural understanding. Novels such as ''The Left Hand of Darkness'' and ''The Telling'' deal with the consequences of the arrival of Ekumen envoys (known as "mobiles") on remote planets and the culture shock that ensues.
Le Guin creates believable worlds populated by strongly sympathetic characters (regardless of whether they are technically 'human'). Le Guin's worlds are made believable by the attention she pays to the ordinary actions and transactions of everyday life. For example in 'Tehanu' it is central to the story that the main characters are concerned with the everyday business of looking after animals, tending gardens and doing domestic chores. Her works often explore political and cultural themes from an "un-Earthly" perspective. 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.
A notable feature of her conception that sets her work apart from much of mainstream 'hard' science fiction is that neither the old Empire nor the Ekumen possesses traditional faster-than-light travel (the Ekumen are developing "churten" technology, a form of instantaneous travel), although the politically progressive Ekumen thrives where the old Empire has failed mainly because it possesses a means of instantaneous interstellar communication, through a device called the ansible, the invention and consequences of which form the main plot of ''The Dispossessed''.
In this loose background scenario, the human species originated on the planet Hain in the distant past, near the galactic center. A Galactic Empire had expanded far across the galaxy over many millennia but, because it lacked faster-than-light (FTL) travel or communication, the Empire was finally stretched beyond its limits by the vast distances involved and it collapsed catastrophically. Thousands of years passed, during which time the populations of many outlying planets became so isolated from the central galactic civilization that they lost all knowledge of their origins, reverting to more archaic forms of civilization and technology.

Fiction

=== Earthsea (fantasy)

The Earthsea novels

★ ''A Wizard of Earthsea'', 1968

★ ''The Tombs of Atuan'', 1971

★ ''The Farthest Shore'', 1972 (Winner of the National Book Award)

★ ''Tehanu: The Last Book of Earthsea'', 1990 (Winner of the Nebula Award)

★ ''The Other Wind'', 2001
Note: The story ''Dragonfly'' from ''Tales from Earthsea'' fits between ''Tehanu'' and ''The Other Wind'' and is "an important bridge in the series as a whole" according to Le Guin in this note on her website.

The Earthsea short stories

★ "The Word of Unbinding", 1975 (in ''The Wind's Twelve Quarters'') (Originally published in the January 1964 issue of Fantastic.)

★ "The Rule of Names", 1975 (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 0-15-100561-3 (winner of Endeavour Award)
=== Hainish Cycle (science fiction)

Novels

★ ''Rocannon's World'', 1966

★ ''Planet of Exile'', 1966

★ ''City of Illusions'', 1967

★ ''The Left Hand of Darkness'', 1969 (winner of the Hugo Award and Nebula Award)

★ ''The Dispossessed: An Ambiguous Utopia'', 1974 (winner of the Hugo Award and Nebula Award)

★ ''The Word for World is Forest'', 1976 (winner of the Hugo Award)

★ ''Four Ways to Forgiveness'', 1995 (Four Stories of the Ekumen)

★ ''Worlds of Exile and Illusion'', 1996 (omnibus of ''Rocannon's World'', ''Planet of Exile'' and ''City of Illusions'')

★ ''The Telling'', 2000 (winner of Endeavour Award)

Short stories from the Hainish Cycle

★ ''Dowry of the Angyar'' (1964) - appears as ''Semley's Necklace'' in ''The Wind's Twelve Quarters'' (1975)

★ ''Winter's King'' (1969) - in ''The Wind's Twelve Quarters'' (1975)

★ ''Vaster Than Empires and More Slow'' (1971) - in ''The Wind's Twelve Quarters'' (1975)

★ ''The Day Before the Revolution'' (1974) - in ''The Wind's Twelve Quarters'' (1975) (winner of the Nebula Award and Locus Award)

★ ''The Shobies' Story'' (1990) - in ''A Fisherman of the Inland Sea'' (1994)

★ ''Dancing to Ganam'' (1993) - in ''A Fisherman of the Inland Sea'' (1994)

★ ''Another Story OR A Fisherman of the Inland Sea'' (1994) - in ''A Fisherman of the Inland Sea'' (1994)

★ ''The Matter of Seggri'' (1994) - in ''The Birthday of the World'' (2002) (winner of the James Tiptree, Jr. Award)

★ ''Unchosen Love'' (1994) - in ''The Birthday of the World'' (2002)

★ ''Solitude'' (1994) - in ''The Birthday of the World'' (2002) (winner of the Nebula Award)

★ ''Coming of Age in Karhide'' (1995) - in ''The Birthday of the World'' (2002)

★ ''Mountain Ways'' (1996) - in ''The Birthday of the World'' (2002) (winner of the James Tiptree, Jr. Award)

★ ''Old Music and the Slave Women'' (1999) - in ''The Birthday of the World'' (2002)

Miscellaneous novels and story cycles

★ ''The Lathe of Heaven'', 1971 (made into TV movies, 1980 and 2002)

★ ''The Eye of the Heron'', 1978 (first published in the anthology ''Millennial Women'', 1978)

★ ''Malafrena'', 1979

★ ''The Beginning Place'', 1980 (also published as ''Threshold'', 1986)

★ ''Always Coming Home'', 1985, a memoir-as-novel mixed with an anthropological collection of folk tales, recipes, rituals, poems, glossary, etc.

Short story collections

★ ''The Wind's Twelve Quarters'', 1975

★ ''Orsinian Tales'', 1976

★ ''The Compass Rose'', 1982

★ ''Buffalo Gals, and Other Animal Presences'', 1987

★ ''Searoad'', 1991

★ ''A Fisherman of the Inland Sea'', 1994

★ ''Unlocking the Air and Other Stories'', 1996

★ ''The Birthday of the World'', 2002, ISBN

★ ''Changing Planes'', 2003, ISBN

Books for children and young adults

''The Catwings Collection''

★ ''Catwings'', 1988

★ ''Catwings Return'', 1989

★ ''Wonderful Alexander and the Catwings'', 1994

★ ''Jane on her Own'', 1999

''The Western Shore''

★ ''Gifts'', 2004

★ ''Voices'', 2006

★ ''Powers'', (September 1, 2007)

Other books for children and young adults

★ ''Very Far Away from Anywhere Else'', 1976, ISBN 0-15-205208-9

★ ''Leese Webster'', 1979, ISBN 0-689-30715-2

★ ''The Beginning Place'', 1980, 0553262823

★ ''Solomon Leviathan's Nine Hundred and Thirty-First Trip Around the World'', 1984, ISBN 0-399-21491-7

★ ''A Visit from Dr. Katz'', 1988, ISBN 0-689-31332-2

★ ''Fire and Stone'', 1989, ISBN 0-689-31408-6

★ ''Fish Soup'', 1992, ISBN 0-689-31733-6

★ ''A Ride on the Red Mare's Back'', 1992, ISBN 0-531-07079-4

★ ''Tom Mouse'', 2002, ISBN 0-7613-1599-3

Nonfiction

Prose

★ ''The Language of the Night'', 1979, revised edition 1992

★ ''Dancing at the Edge of the World'', 1989

★ ''Revisioning Earthsea'', 1992 (a published lecture)

★ ''Steering the Craft'', 1998 (about writing)

★ ''The Wave in the Mind'', 2004

Poetry

★ ''Wild Angels'', 1975

★ ''Hard Words and Other Poems'', 1981

★ ''Wild Oats and Fireweed'', 1988

★ ''Going Out with Peacocks and Other Poems'', 1994

★ '', 1999

★ ''Incredible Good Fortune'', 2006

Translations and Renditions

★ ''Lao Tzu : Tao Te Ching, a Book about the Way & the Power of the Way'', 1997 (a rendition and commentary) ISBN 1-57062-333-3

★ ''Kalpa Imperial'', 2003, 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.

Adaptations to film and television

Despite her many awards and her considerable popularity, Le Guin's major SF and Fantasy works have not as yet been widely adapted for film or television. For television, ''The Lathe of Heaven'' has been adapted twice, in 1980 by thirteen/WNET New York, with her own participation, and in 2002 by the A&E Network; while the first two books of the Earthsea trilogy were adapted into the miniseries ''Legend of Earthsea'' in 2004 by the Sci Fi Channel. This "adaptation" was extremely poorly received by both readers of the books and LeGuin herself, who reports that she was "cut out of the process".
The animated feature film , based on characters and events from the 3rd and 4th Earthsea books, was produced by in 2005 under the direction of Gorō Miyazaki. Le Guin was generally disappointed with the film, if not as outrightly disapproving as she been of the Sci Fi miniseries, as both adaptations added major characters and events which she felt were unfaithful to her work in terms of both content and spirit. Most of all, she was saddened that Goro's father Hayao Miyazaki missed his chance to direct an Earthsea film. (The elder Miyazaki had asked permission to create an Earthsea adaptation back in the early 1980s, but Le Guin, not knowing his work, or indeed anime in general, turned him down. After viewing ''My Neighbour Totoro'', she then came to the idea that if anyone should be allowed to direct an Earthsea film, it should be Hayao Miyazaki.)[1]

Additional awards

Le Guin received the Library of Congress ''Living Legends'' award in the "Writers and Artists" category in April 2000 for her significant contributions to America's cultural heritage.
Le Guin was honored by The Washington Center for the Book for her distinguished body of work with the Maxine Cushing Gray Fellowship for Writers October of 2006.

Scholarship

★ Brown, Joanne, & St. Clair, Nancy, ''Declarations of Independence: Empowered Girls in Young Adult Literature, 1990–2001'' (Lanham, MD, & London: The Scarecrow Press, 2002 [Scarecrow Studies in Young Adult Literature, No. 7])

★ Cart, Michael, ''From Romance to Realism: 50 Years of Growth and Change in Young Adult Literature'' (New York: HarperCollins, 1996)

★ Egoff, Sheila, Stubbs, G. T., & Ashley, L. F., eds, ''Only Connect: Readings on Children’s Literature'' (Toronto & New York: Oxford University Press, 1969; 2nd ed., 1980; 3rd ed., 1996)

★ Egoff, Sheila A., ''Worlds Within: Children’s Fantasy from the Middle Ages to Today'' (Chicago & London: American Library Association, 1988)

★ Lehr, Susan, ed., ''Battling Dragons: Issues and Controversy in Children’s Literature'' (Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann, 1995)

★ Lennard, John, ''Of Modern Dragons and other essays on Genre Fiction'' (Tirril: Humanities-Ebooks, 2007)

★ Reginald, Robert, & Slusser, George, eds, ''Zephyr and Boreas: Winds of Change in the Fictions of Ursula K. Le Guin'' (San Bernadino, CA: Borgo Press, 1997)

★ Rochelle, Warren G., ''Communities of the Heart: The Rhetoric of Myth in the Fiction of Ursula K. Le Guin'' (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2001)

★ Sullivan III, C. W., ed., ''Young Adult Science Fiction'' (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1999 [Contributions to the Study of Science Fiction and Fantasy 79])

★ Trites, Roberta Seelinger, ''Disturbing the Universe: Power and Repression in Adolescent Literature'' (Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 2000)

★ Wayne, Kathryn Ross, ''Redefining Moral Education: Life, Le Guin, and Language'' (Lanham, MD: Austin & Winfield, 1995)

★ White, Donna R., ''Dancing with Dragons: Ursula K. Le Guin and the Critics'' (Ontario: Camden House, 1998 [Literary Criticism in Perspective])

References

External links

★ Ursula Le Guin's homepage

★

★ Collection of Ursula Le Guin info at feministsf.org

★ LitWeb.net: Ursula Le Guin Biography

★

★ Interview in ''The Guardian'' December 17 2005

★ Review of ''The Left Hand Of Darkness''

★ [2] Another review of ''The Left Hand of Darkness''

★ Review of ''The Dispossessed''

★ LeGuin talks about the ''Earthsea'' film

★ More about LeGuin and the Earthsea film

★ Smith, Heather. "Judging a Book by Its Cover: The Dispossessed" at the Bookslut.com, October 2006.