Ursula K. Le Guin

American author of science fiction and fantasy

• Born: October 21, 1929
• Birthplace: Berkeley, California

Biography

Ursula Kroeber Le Guin has been a major figure in the elevation of science fiction and fantasy from minor literature to the mainstream of American letters. She is the daughter of the respected anthropologist Alfred Louis Kroeber and Theodora Kroeber, author of Ishi in Two Worlds: A Biography of the Last Wild Indian in North America (1961). Her childhood was marked by the intellectual and imaginative stimulation of her home life, alternating between the university atmosphere of Berkeley, California, and summers in the Napa Valley, where she came to know and love the country landscape.

Though she began writing as a child, she did not publish until after she ended her formal education, married, and became a parent. Le Guin received her undergraduate degree from Radcliffe College in 1951, and she earned her master’s degree at Columbia University in 1952 and then began work toward a PhD in French. While on a Fulbright Fellowship in France, she met and married Charles A. Le Guin. After the couple settled in Portland, Oregon, she began raising their three children by day and writing at night. Her first published story, “An die Musik,” appeared in 1961.

In 1966 Le Guin published her first science-fiction novel, Rocannon’s World. This was followed by the increasingly powerful novels in the Hainish series that were to contribute to her considerable reputation. While Planet of Exile (1966) and City of Illusions (1967)were well received, The Left Hand of Darkness (1969) established Le Guin’s reputation in science fiction when it won the prestigious Nebula and Hugo awards. The last major novel in this series, The Dispossessed (1974), won Nebula, Hugo, and Jupiter awards.

At the same time that she was gaining a reputation among science-fiction enthusiasts, Le Guin was establishing herself as a formidable writer of fantasy fiction for young readers. The first Earthsea book, A Wizard of Earthsea (1968), won the Boston Globe Horn Book Award for 1968. The next volume in the series, The Tombs of Atuan (1971), was awarded a Newbery Honor, and the third, The Farthest Shore (1972), won a National Book Award. In 1990 Le Guin completed the series, which up to then was considered a trilogy, with Tehanu: The Last Book of Earthsea, which is a novel that is much influenced by her increasingly feminist outlook.

Indeed, beginning in the mid-1970s, Le Guin’s writings turned from the male-oriented adventure quest of traditional science fiction and fantasy to a more complete exploration of female characters, particularly in the relationship of women to the natural world. Influenced by feminist literary and political theories, she also became more experimental. In 1985 she published Always Coming Home, a highly ambitious work that combines science fiction with anthropology. The book presents “stories and life-stories, plays, poems, and songs,” the artifacts of an imaginary culture, exactly as they might be collected and recorded by an anthropologist studying an existing culture. While such a book is a radical departure from the adventure/quest narrative so often at the core of Le Guin’s previous novels, its center remains the same as in all Le Guin’s best works, the unity in opposition found in Taoism.

Nearly all Le Guin’s mature work shows the influence of Jungian psychoanalysis and Taoism, though there are many other important influences on her work. One of the more pervasive oppositions in her fiction is between an aggressive, technological, authoritarian, masculine consciousness and a more peaceful feminine consciousness that depends on nature-based “magic” and ritual for social control. Behind this opposition, Le Guin reveals a fundamental unity, visualized in Taoism’s yin-yang symbol. All oppositions in human experience impel the cosmos through time and change, working together though they seem to be opposites. Le Guin’s works emphasize that human happiness is possible when the individual and society succeed in balancing these oppositions, giving each its due while affirming life. Though death, nonbeing, and the unconscious are essential components of human existence, they are to be dominated by life, being, and consciousness.

Le Guin’s most acclaimed fiction, notably The Left Hand of Darkness, The Dispossessed, and the Earthsea books, compares favorably with the best of modern fiction. These novels remain popular with general readers and have made their ways into high school and college courses. Her nonfiction essays, particularly those on feminism, science fiction and fantasy, and the craft of writing, are frequently reprinted and have led to her popularity as a public speaker.

Over the course of her writing career, Le Guin has received multiple honors and awards, including the 1973 National Book Award for her young-adult novel The Farthest Shore (1972); numerous “year’s best” literary awards; and a multitude of Locus, Hugo, Nebula, Asimov’s Readers, and World Fantasy awards. Her short fiction has been recognized with a PEN/Malamud Award, a Pushcart Prize, and her collection of short stories, Unlocking the Air, and Other Stories, was a 1997 Pulitzer Prize finalist. In 2014, Le Guin was presented with the National Book Award’s Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters, which honors writers who have significantly impacted the US literary heritage over the course of their life work. Le Guin drew attention from readers, publishers, and book sellers alike with her acceptance speech in which she praised fellow, and often overlooked, fantasy and science-fiction writers, accused the publishing industry of being more concerned with profits than with providing access to art, and likened the online book seller Amazon.com of being a punishing profiteer.

Author Works

Long Fiction:

Rocannon’s World, 1966

Planet of Exile, 1966

City of Illusions, 1967

A Wizard of Earthsea, 1968

The Left Hand of Darkness, 1969

The Tombs of Atuan, 1971

The Lathe of Heaven, 1971

The Farthest Shore, 1972

The Dispossessed: An Ambiguous Utopia, 1974

Very Far Away from Anywhere Else, 1976

The Eye of the Heron, 1978

Malafrena, 1979

The Beginning Place, 1980

Always Coming Home, 1985

Tehanu: The Last Book of Earthsea, 1990

Searoad: Chronicles of Klatsand, 1991

Four Ways to Forgiveness, 1995 (four linked novellas)

The Telling, 2000

The Other Wind, 2001

Lavinia, 2008

Short Fiction:

The Word for World Is Forest, 1972

The Wind’s Twelve Quarters, 1975

Orsinian Tales, 1976

The Compass Rose, 1982

Buffalo Gals and Other Animal Presences, 1987

Fish Soup, 1992

A Fisherman of the Inland Sea: Science Fiction Stories, 1994

Four Ways to Forgiveness, 1995

Unlocking the Air, and Other Stories, 1996

Tales from Earthsea, 2001, 2012

The Birthday of the World, and Other Stories, 2002

Changing Places, 2003

The Daughter of Odren, 2014

The Found and the Lost: The Collected Novellas of Ursula K. Le Guin, 2016

Poetry:

Wild Angels, 1975

Hard Words, and Other Poems, 1981

In the Red Zone, 1983

Wild Oats and Fireweed: New Poems, 1988

Blue Moon over Thurman Street, 1993

Going Out with Peacocks, and Other Poems, 1994

Sixty Odd: New Poems, 1999

Incredible Good Fortune: New Poems, 2006

Out Here: Poems and Images from Steens Mountain Country, 2010 (Roger Dorband, photographer)

Finding My Elegy: New and Selected Poems 1960–2010, 2012

Late in the Day: Poems, 2010–2014, 2016

Nonfiction:

From Elfland to Poughkeepsie, 1973

The Language of the Night: Essays on Fantasy and Science Fiction, 1979 (Susan Wood, editor)

Dancing at the Edge of the World: Thoughts on Words, Women, and Places, 1988

Napa: The Roots and Springs of the Valley, 1989

The Wave in the Mind: Talks and Essays on the Writer, the Reader, and the Imagination, 2004

Cheek by Jowl, 2009

The Wild Girls, 2011

Steering the Craft: Exercises and Discussions on Story Writing for the Lone Navigator or the Mutinous Crew, 1998, rev. ed. 2015

Words Are My Matter: Writings about Life and Books, 2000–2016, with a Journal of a Writer’s Week, 2016

Edited Text:

Interfaces, 1980 (with Virginia Kidd)

Edges: Thirteen New Tales from the Borderlands of the Imagination, 1980 (with V. Kidd)

The Norton Book of Science Fiction: North American Science Fiction, 1960-1990, 1993

Selected Stories of H. G. Wells, 2004

Children’s/Young Adult Literature:

Very Far Away from Anywhere Else, 1976

Leese Webster, 1979

The Adventure of Cobbler’s Rune, 1982

The Visionary, 1984

Solomon Leviathan’s 31st Trip Around the World, 1988

A Visit from Dr. Katz, 1988

Catwings, 1988

Catwings Return, 1989

Fire and Stone, 1989

A Ride on the Red Mare’s Back, 1992

Earthsea Revisioned, 1993

More Tales of the Catwings, 1994

Wonderful Alexander and the Catwings, 1994

Tales of the Catwings, 1996

Tom Mouse, 1998

Tom Mouse and Ms. Howe, 1998

Jane on Her Own: A Catwing’s Tale, 1999

Gifts, 2004

Voices, 2006

Powers, 2007

Cat Dreams, 2009

Translation:

Tao Te Ching: A Book About the Way and the Power of the Way, 1997 (of Laozi)

Kalpa Imperial: The Greatest Empire That Never Was by Angela Gorodischer, 2003

Selected Poems of Gabriela Mistral, 2003

Bibliography

Bittner, James W. Approaches to the Fiction of Ursula K. Le Guin. Ann Arbor: UMI Research Press, 1984. This author discusses both Le Guin’s short stories and novels, making connections among her works to show how certain themes are apparent in all of them.

Bucknall, Barbara J. Ursula K. Le Guin. New York: Frederick Ungar, 1981. The main emphasis in this book is a discussion of Le Guin’s novels, mainly in chronological order. It does include one chapter devoted to her short fiction.

Collins, Jerre. “Leaving Omelas: Questions of Faith and Understanding.” Studies in Short Fiction 27 (Fall, 1990): 525–35. Argues that “The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas” can be read either as a religious allegory of the “suffering servant” or as an allegory of Western capitalism; however, rejection of the capitalist exploitation story undermines the redemption story. Thus, Le Guin indirectly supports the scapegoat theodicy she tries to undermine.

Cummins, Elizabeth. Understanding Ursula K. Le Guin. Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1990. An analysis of Le Guin’s work emphasizing the different worlds she has created (Earthsea, the Hannish World, Orsinia, and the West Coast) and how they provide the structure for all of her fiction.

De Bolt, Joe, ed. Ursula K. Le Guin: Voyager to Inner Lands and to Outer Space. Port Washington, N.Y.: Kennikat Press, 1979. This volume is a collection of critical essays that discusses Le Guin’s work from a variety of perspectives, including anthropology, sociology, science, and Daoist philosophy.

Dwyer, Colin. “Book News: Ursula K. Le Guin Steals the Show at the National Book Awards.” NPR. National Public Radio, 20 Nov. 2014. Web. 24 Dec. 2014. Reports on Le Guin’s 2014 speech at the National Book Awards ceremony.

Freedman, Carl. Critical Theory and Science Fiction. Hanover, N.H.: Wesleyan University Press, 2000. Le Guin is one of five science-fiction writers whose works are analyzed using contemporary literary theory.

Freeman, John. “Ursula Le Guin: She Got There First.” Boston Globe. Boston Globe Media Partners, 22 Nov. 2014. Web. 24 Dec. 2014. Examines the impact of Le Guin’s work.

Jacobson, Rebecca. “Degender Bender.” Willamette Week. Willamette Week Newspaper, 1 May 2013. Web. 24 Dec. 2014. Discusses the adaptation of the novel The Left Hand of Darkness as a play.

Kaler, Anne K. “‘Carving in Water’: Journey/Journals and the Images of Women’s Writings in Ursula Le Guin’s ‘Sur.’” Literature, Interpretation, Theory 7 (1997): 51–62. Claims that Le Guin’s story “Sur” provides a cleverly coded map for women striving to be professional writers; to illustrate the paths that women writers must take into the tundras ruled by male writers, she uses the devices of disorder, dislocation, and reversal in the journey/journal..

Keulen, Margarete. Radical Imagination: Feminist Conceptions of the Future in Ursula Le Guin, Marge Piercy, and Sally Miller Gearhart. New York: Peter Lang, 1991. Explores science fiction from a feminist viewpoint in the three authors. Includes bibliographical references and an index.

Reid, Suzanne Elizabeth. Presenting Ursula K. Le Guin. New York: Twayne, 1997. This critical biography helps young readers to understand how her childhood, family, and life have helped to shape Le Guin’s work.

Rochelle, Warren. Communities of the Heart: The Rhetoric of Myth in the Fiction of Ursula K. Le Guin. Liverpool: University of Liverpool Press, 2001. Analyzes Le Guin’s construction of myth and use of mythological themes in her work.

Spivack, Charlotte. Ursula K. Le Guin. Boston: Twayne, 1984. Begins with a brief chronology of important personal and professional milestones in Le Guin’s life up to 1981, and then examines her background and her literary contributions. Includes annotated references, primary and secondary bibliographies, and an index.

Walsh, William. “I Am a Woman Writer; I Am a Western Writer: An Interview with Ursula Le Guin.” The Kenyon Review, n.s. 17 (Summer/Fall, 1995): 192–205. Le Guin discusses such topics as the genre of science fiction, her readership, the feminist movement, women writers, and the Nobel Prize..

Wayne, Katherine Ross. Redefining Moral Education: Life, Le Guin, and Language. San Francisco: Austin and Winfield, 1996. Focuses on ecological concerns and the depiction of the environment and environmentalism in Le Guin’s work.

White, Donna R. Dancing with Dragons: Ursula K. Le Guin and the Critics. Columbia, S.C.: Camden House, 1999. Part of the Studies in English and American Literature, Linguistics, and Culture series, this volume examines Le Guin’s works and critical reaction to them.