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20 Quotes from The Dispossessed

August 22, 2014, 7:00 am
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20 Quotes from The Dispossessed I thought I was done. I thought four parts and 7,500 words would be enough. But as I completed the last piece, I realize there was still so much more within The Dispossessed that spoke to me, and so much more than I wanted to share. So I took the […]
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Art and Science, Wonder and Wisdom

October 11, 2014, 3:06 pm
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If there’s one website I never seem to tire of, it’s Maria Popova’s Brain Pickings. “A subjective lens on what matters in the world and why”, Popova’s curation of articles are consistently thought-provoking and inspirational (to the point where my Twitter feed is replete with pieces from her site!) A place of intellectual, creative, and […]
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Margaret Atwood Journeys to Earthsea

October 30, 2014, 8:30 am
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“I would call [A Wizard of Earthsea] a fantasy book for adults. You might call it young adult or fantasy, or one of those categories—which are really just there to help people put things on bookshelves. But because it is really talking about life and mortality and who are we as human beings, and what is the […]
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Ursula K. Le Guin at the National Book Awards

November 21, 2014, 9:00 am
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Ursula K. Le Guin accepts the National Book Foundation’s Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters at the 65th National Book Awards on November 19, 2014. “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 […]
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BBC Radio’s Adaptation of The Left Hand of Darkness

March 31, 2015, 12:29 pm
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So this came into my feed: Adaptations to beloved stories are always a risky thing. But having listened to the preview of what is undoubtedly the most moving passage in what is arguably my favourite book, I think they will do justice to the work. The words have changed compared to the first paragraphs of Chapter 18, but the haunting beauty of the scene is as I remembered it, back when I first lingered on each sentence, back when I first read it aloud in my writer’s group, and now as I recite it again in my mind. From memory (pardon the punctuation mistakes): “Sometimes, as I’m falling asleep in a dark and quiet room, I have for a moment a great and treasurable illusion of the past. The wall of the tent leans up against my face, not visible but audible, a slanting plane of faint sound. The susurrus of blown snow, nothing can be seen. The light emission of the Chabe stove is cut off, and it exists only as a sphere of …
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Ekostories Reconnect: A Wizard of Earthsea

May 2, 2015, 11:45 am
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I think it was the sheer awfulness of this cover that persuaded my eleven-year-old self to pick A Wizard of Earthsea out of the class bookbox during reading period. Expecting a time wasting filler like so many others before, I had no idea at the time that I had just stumbled upon one of my most treasured and revisited stories in my life. Bless that ugly cover! Unlike the cover art, Ruth Robbin’s small but intricate illustrations that marked the beginning of each chapter made a positive lasting impression on me. So, as tribute to Robbin’s drawings and in time for BBC Radio 4’s recent dramatization of what is regarded as one of the seminal fantasy series of the 20th century , I present my sgraffito Wizard of Earthsea ceramic coasters! “It was only the dumb instinctive wisdom of the beast who licks his hurt companion to comfort him, and yet in that wisdom Ged saw something akin to his own power, something that went as deep as wizardry. From that time forth he believed that the …
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Ekostories Reconnect: The Farthest Shore

May 9, 2015, 11:41 am
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While  A Wizard of Earthsea was a major childhood touchstone for me, it is the sequel The Farthest Shore that I return to time and again. Over the years I have found both comfort and strength within its pages during times of loss. For death is what the book, even though it is a YA novel (a National Book Award winning one at that), is really about: “The Farthest Shore is about the thing you do not live through and survive. It seemed an absolutely suitable subject to me for young readers, since in a way one can say that the hour when a child realizes, not that death exists – children are intensely aware of death – but that he/she, personally, is mortal, will die, is the hour when childhood ends, and the new life begins. Coming of age again, but in a larger context.” – Dreams must Explain Themselves, The Language of the Night And so inspired, here’s my tribute to the tale of Ged and Arren as they travel beyond the farthest shore, into the dry …
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20 Quotes from The Dispossessed

August 22, 2014, 7:00 am
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I thought I was done. I thought four parts and 7,500 words would be enough. But as I completed the last piece, I realize there was still so much more within The Dispossessed that spoke to me, and so much more than I wanted to share. So I took the easy way out and created a list post. I’ve come back to the following twenty passages time and again, discovering new nuances and insight within them. I chose them because they work both in text and on their own. I’ve inserted my brief thoughts with each, but I would love to hear what you think as well. On Education and Learning: “They were superbly trained, these students…Their society maintained them in complete freedom from want, distractions, and cares. What they were free to do, however, was another question. It appeared to Shevek that their freedom from obligation was in exact proportion to their lack of freedom of initiative.” (p.127) I can see how my parents and my grandparents would think that way about my generation, …
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Happy Birthday, Ursula K. Le Guin

October 21, 2015, 9:20 pm
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Today is the 86th birthday of author Ursula K. Le Guin, without whom I would have never wrote all the words on this blog, or any words in general, because I would have missed out on visiting worlds of wizards, dragons, aliens, Italians, anarchists, and ants. In light of this happy occasion, I’ve compiled the pieces I’ve written about her work over the years on Ekostories. To steal a passage from the introduction she did for James Tiptree Jr.’s Star Songs of an Old Primate: “Here are Some real stories.”
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Worlds of Ursula K. Le Guin – A Documentary

February 2, 2016, 5:59 pm
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Not that this needs any promotion from me, as the project seems to be on track to smash its funding goal after just two days, but I’m excited to share news of this Kickstarter campaign on a full-length documentary on Ursula K. Le Guin. Titled Worlds of Ursula K. Le Guin and backed by the National Endowment of the Humanities, director and producer Arwen Curry is seeking the final bit of funding to complete her film exploring the 86 year old’s past, present, and enduring legacy. “Le Guin’s story allows audiences to reflect on science fiction’s unique role in American culture, as a conduit for our utopian dreams, apocalyptic fears, and tempestuous romance with technology. More than ever, we need to perform the kinds of thought experiments that Le Guin pioneered, to ask how we should behave as our technologies transform us beyond the wildest dreams of our grandparents.”  – Arwen Curry I’ve been following this project for a while, but it looks like it’s finally coming together. For more info about the campaign including those sweet …
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Dear Ursula…

January 23, 2018, 9:46 pm
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When I first began writing seriously a few years back, I enrolled in a local creative writing intensive program. During one of the workshop sessions, we were asked to read something we loved in order to figure out how great writing sounds. Naturally I settled on your writing and found a passage in my battered Ace trade paperback edition of The Left Hand of Darkness. Chapter 18 begins: “Sometimes, as I’m falling asleep in a dark and quiet room, I have for a moment a great and treasurable illusion of the past. The wall of the tent leans up against my face, not visible but audible, a slanting plane of faint sound. The susurrus of blown snow, nothing can be seen. The light emission of the Chabe stove is cut off, and it exists only as a sphere of heat, a heart of warmth. The faint dampness and confining cling of my sleeping bag, the sound of the snow. Barely audible, Estraven’s breathing as he sleeps. Darkness. Nothing else. We are inside, the two of …
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All My Best Words Were Hers

April 5, 2018, 9:43 am
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My thanks to Entropy Magazine for publishing All My Best Words Were Hers, my essay exploring the legacy of Ursula K. Le Guin. Over the past several months, I’ve mourned her passing by reading every tribute I can find. Most touch upon her seminal works, on Earthsea and Omelas, on The Dispossessed and The Left Hand of Darkness. Yet few seem to speak to the wider breadth of her oeuvre, which ranged from critical essays and genre-defying short stories to translations of ancient texts and funny food recipes. Le Guin would be rankled at that, I think. This piece is intended to shine a light on her lesser known works, reorient her more famous pieces through my own lens, and showcase the woman behind and beyond the words. She would appreciate the gesture, I hope: “In the evening, my mom sends me a text: Are you ok? I saw one of her quotes @Twitter: ‘Go on and do your work. Do it well. It is all you can do.’ Gensher, of Way. A biological parent, delivering advice from a literary …
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Transience, Juxtaprose Magazine

June 17, 2018, 10:00 am
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Happy to have a new personal essay up in the summer issue of Juxtaprose, a literary magazine that juxtaposes both emerging and established writers as well as local and global ones. It seemed a good fit as Transience itself contrasts the terrestrial with the celestial, the profound with the quotidian, the intimate with the vastly distant: “…Hundreds of us had gathered for the Perseid meteor showers, drawn to a source phenomenon that may have sparked our species’ penchant for fireworks, rock concerts, and other grand spectacles. Throughout the ages cultures gave names to these star sacrifices, imbued them with intention, granted them power. Shooting stars were transmuted into the slings of slighted gods, dragons of fortune and calamity, the tears of martyred saints. Even in modern times, when we know that they comprise mere rock and debris, many of us continue to attach meaning to these mineral rains. Some of us still seek miracles by appealing to forces we do not understand and cannot master. I still, on occasion, have the need to wish upon …
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Lammergeier, Journeys to Earthsea

March 15, 2019, 9:08 am
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Thrilled that my newest personal essay has found a home in the debut issue of Lammergeier, a literary publication named after one of the coolest birds around: “Lammergeier, as with so many artistic visions, starts with a bird. Lammergeiers eat almost exclusively bones. Using its large, powerful wings, the lammergeier drops bones from the great heights to crack them open and access the marrow inside. The lammergeier is also renowned for its plumage: brilliant rusty-hued feathers and dark, bristled faces created both by the luck of birth and the wear and tear of its mountain habits. We here at Lammergeier look for the beautiful vulture, the wonder uncovered digging through the grotesque, the sustaining viscera inside the carcass.” – About Us, Lammergeier “Journeys to Earthsea” delves into the trips I’ve made over the decades to what is arguably the most famous fictional archipelago: “Narveduen. The name is what draws my eye. NAR-VE-DU-EN. The sound is what holds true. Surrounding it, the isles of Derhemen, Onon, and Hille. South and west, the scraps of rock above …
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Crafting with Ursula: Writing Nature and Nature Writing

March 14, 2022, 1:58 pm
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I’m very excited to share a recent conversation I had with David Naimon, host of Between the Covers. A bit about the show: Between the Covers , a literary radio show and podcast hosted by David Naimon, is brought to you by Tin House. These long-form in-depth conversations have been singled out by the Guardian, Book Riot, the Financial Times, and BuzzFeed as one of the most notable book podcasts for writers and readers around.  I’ve been a big fan of David’s interviews for years, having come across his work through his three craft talks with Ursula K. Le Guin, which was later published as the book Conversations on Writing. (His own creative writing is also amazing.) So imagine my delight and surprise when he approached me to contribute to a new series called “Crafting with Ursula,” in particular around the subject of nature writing. Some of the stories we discussed, like “Direction of the Road” and the “Author of Acacia Seeds“, have been featured in the past here on Ekostories. Others, like “The Bones of the Earth” and “Vaster …
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