On several dimensions important to me—and to most writers—Ursula Le Guin has excelled almost beyond comprehension. One thing I admire, which doesn’t fit into any particular category, is that Le Guin’s writing is a spiral rather than a line, i.e., she didn’t write one way and then move on to another, never looking back. When you examine the list of her publications at the end of this blog, you’ll see that in any given year, she was writing in several directions, and in later years she circled back to earlier series.
Wonder Woman for Breadth
Although best known for science fiction and fantasy, over a writing career that spanned more than half a century, she wrote all sorts of things for all sorts of readers, across genres and formats. Her first publication was a poem, “Folksong from the Montayna Province,” in 1959. She continued to write poetry over the decades, but she would never have labeled herself a poet. The New York Times (2016) called her “America’s greatest living science fiction writer,” but she preferred to be known as a novelist.
Besides poetry, science fiction, and fantasy, she wrote children’s books, short stories, literary fiction, non-fiction, literary criticism, and blogs. Among her non-fiction writings are books of advice for writers, which grew out of her work as an editor and teacher (at Tulane, Bennington, and Stanford, among others), the best known of which is Steering the Craft. BTW, within the last nine months, this guide has been recommended to me by two separate and independent writing teachers.
Wonder Woman for Social Justice
Writing during years when what was socially accepted was evolving, her fiction often depicted alternatives seldom spoken of regarding gender options and alternatives, religion, race, sexuality, politics, the natural environment, and culture. Perhaps this was the legacy of having an anthropologist father and a mother trained in psychology who later turned to writing. According to Wikipedia, her writing contains many recurring themes and ideas: the archetypal journey, cultural contact, communication, the search for identity, and reconciling opposing forces. This is as I remembered her fiction from years ago. I think it’s about time to revisit Le Guin!
Her novel The Left Hand of Darkness (1969) has been called her first contribution to feminism. Le Guin created, for example, a planet where humans have no fixed sex. Her work brings to the foreground on an ongoing basis equality, coming-of-age, and death.
What I call her “sociological/cultural” approach is what appealed to me, as opposed to sci-fi/fantasy that depends on technology, genetic modification, mind control, robots, and similar machines of domination.
Wonder Woman for Achievement
Overall Achievement
Le Guin graduated Phi Beta Kappa from Radcliffe and was awarded three Fulbrights. In 2002 the U.S. Library of Congress made Le Guin a Living Legend in the “Writers and Artists” category.
- A PEN/Malamud Award
- American Library Association honors for young adult literature and for children’s literature
- Pacific Northwest Booksellers Association Lifetime Achievement Award
- The Maxine Cushing Gray Fellowship for Writers from the Washington Center for the Book
- The Emperor Has No Clothes Award from the Freedom From Religion Foundation
- National Book Foundation Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters (a lifetime Achievement award)
- Gandalf Award Grand Master of Fantasy
- Pilgrim Award from the Science Fiction Research Association
- Induction into the Science Fiction and Fantasy Hall of Fame.
- Grand Master of The Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America
- North American Society for Utopian Studies Lyman Tower Sargent Distinguished Scholar Award
Awards for Specific Works
- 5 Locus
- 4 Nebula
- 2 Hugo
- 1 World Fantasy Award.
- 4 awards in short fiction
- 19 Locus awards voted by magazine subscribers
- National Book Award for Young People’s Literature
- Finalist for 10 Mythopoeic Awards
- Finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction
- Hugo Award for Best Related Work
- PLUS: other annual “Year’s Best” awards
Wonder Woman for Productivity
See for yourself below. And this is only an approximation! I’ve marked award winners by *. For more than one award, multiple asterisks. Disclaimer: I’ve done my best but I’m sure I’ve missed both publications (particularly short stories and novellas, which often don’t make lists) and awards. Still, it’s pretty impressive!
Hainish science fiction series
Rocannon’s World, 1966
Planet of Exile, 1966
City of Illusions, 1967
The Left Hand of Darkness, 1969**
The Dispossessed, 1974***
The Word for World is Forest, 1976*
Four Ways to Forgiveness, 1995
The Telling, 2000**
Earthsea fantasy series
A Wizaard of Earthsea, 1968*
The Tombs of Atuan, 1971*
The Farthest Shore, 1972*
Tenah: The Last Book of Earthsea, 1990**
Tales from Earthsea, 2001 (short stories)
The Other Wind, 2001*
Earthsea Revisioned, 1993 (an Earthsea non-fiction book)
Adventures in Kroy books
The Adventures of Cobbler’s Rue (1982)
Solomon Leviathan’s Nine-Hundred and Thirty-First Trip Around the World, 1982
Catwing book series
Catwings, 1988
Catwings Return, 1989
Wonderful Alexander and the Catwings, 1994
Jane On Her Own, 1992
Cat Dreams, 2009
Chronicles Of The Western Shore books
Gifts, 2004
Voices, 2006
Powers, 2007*
Standalone Novels
The Lathe of Heaven, 1971*
Very Far Away from Anywhere Else, 1976
The Eye of the Heron, 1978
Malafrena, 1979
The Beginning Place, 1980
Always Coming Home, 1985
Searoad: Chronicles of Klatsand, 1991
Changing Planes, 2002*
Lavinia, 2008*
Short Stories and Novellas
The Day Before the Revolutios, 1974*
The Water is Wide, 1976
Leese Webster, 1979
Gwillan’s Harp, 1981
The Visionary: The Life Story of Flicker the Serpentine of Telina-Na, 1984
The Shobies’ Story, 1990
The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas, 1991*
Nine Lives, 1992
Buffalo Gals: Won’t You Come Out Tonight, 1994**
Solitude, 1995*
Coming of Age in Karhide, 1995
Old Music and the Slave Women, 1999
The Wild Girls, 2011
Short Story and Poetry Collections
Wild Agels, 1974
Orsinian Tales, 1975
The Winds’s Twelve Quarters, 1975
Walking in Cornwall, 1976
Nebula Award Stories 11, 1976
Hard Words and Other Poems, 1981
The Compass Rose, 1982
In the Red Zone, 1983
Buffalo Gals and Other Animal Presences, 1987
The Visionary, Wonders Hidden, 1988
Blue Moon Over Thurman Street, 1993
Going Out with Peacocks and Other Poems, 1994
A Fisherman of the Inland Sea, 1994
Unlocking the Air and Other Stories, 1996
Sixty Odd: New Poems, 1999
The Birthday of the World and Other Stories, 2002
Incredible Good Fortune: New Poems, 2006
Dragon Lords and Warrior Women, 2010
Finding My Elegy, 2012
Late in the Day: Poems 2010-2014
Picture Books
A Visit from Dr. Katz, 1988
Fire and Stone, 1989
Fish Soup, 1992
A Ride on the Red Mare’s Back, 1992
Tom Mouse, 2001
Non-Fiction Books
From Elfland to Poughkeepsie, 1973
Dreams Must Explain Themselves, 1975
The Language of the Night, 1979
Steering the Craft, 1984
Dancing at the Edge of the World, 1989
The Way of the Water’s Going, 1989
The Wave in the Mind, 2004
Cheek by Jowl, 2009
Lao Tzu: Tao Te Ching, 2009
The World Split Open, 2014
Steering the Craft: A Twenty-First Century Guide to Sailing the Sea of Story, 2015
No Time to Spare: Thinking About What Matters, 2017**
This book is a collection of the best of Le Guin’s blogs—the newest frontier of writing. If she had not died January 22, 2018, who knows where she might have gone next?
