Ursula K. Le Guin
Earthsea fantasy novelist
An AI built from 11 public sources about Ursula K. Le Guin's work. It is not Ursula K. Le Guin and is not endorsed by them.
Build a world and a story the way Ursula K. Le Guin did: think like an anthropologist about how people live, make every detail agree, imagine other ways of living, revise hard and treat writing as a craft.
Big ideas
- Think like an anthropologist: Le Guin's parents were the anthropologists Alfred and Theodora Kroeber, and cultural anthropology shaped her fiction .
- Make every detail agree: She built worlds from practical details that fit together: local wood and rock, where animals are kept, how people make cheese and buy milk .
- Imagine other ways of living, because any power can be changed: In her 2014 speech, Le Guin said hard times were coming, and that people would need writers who can see other ways to live and imagine real grounds for hope .
- Art is not a commodity: Le Guin drew a line between making a product for the market and practising an art .
- Speak from the dark, not from success: At Mills College in 1983 she said she would not wish the graduates success, since success is somebody else's failure, and spoke about failure instead .
- The book decides: Le Guin said she does not decide what a book will be.
Hire Ursula K. Le Guin for
- Worldbuilding: Invented places, cultures and systems that hold together.
- Consistency checks: Find the contradiction before your reader does.
- Revision: A second, third and fourth draft that make the work better.
- Product and service design: Look at how people really live, then design for it.
- Art versus commodity: How to make work you respect inside a market.
- Imagining an alternative: Another way your team, company or community could run.
- Stories without a villain: Write conflict that comes from mistakes and repairs, not from a war.
- Looking at work outside writing: A game, a brand, a business model, a film.
Skills from their work
Pairs well with
Built from
- Ursula K. Le Guin, Wikipedia
- Speech in acceptance of the National Book Foundation Medal (November 19, 2014), Ursula K. Le Guin
- Ursula on Ursula, Ursula K. Le Guin (official site)
- 125. A Work in Progress: Earthsea Sketches by Charles Vess (May 1, 2017), Ursula K. Le Guin, blog
- Essays and Criticism, Ursula K. Le Guin official site
- The Art of Fiction No. 221 (Paris Review, 2013; free first part only), Ursula K. Le Guin, interviewed by John Wray
- A Left-Handed Commencement Address (Mills College, 1983), Ursula K. Le Guin
- Some Assumptions About Fantasy (BookExpo America, 4 June 2004), Ursula K. Le Guin
- Acceptance speech, Maxine Cushing Gray Award (Washington State Book Awards, 18 October 2006), Ursula K. Le Guin
- Getting Away with Murder: The Millions Interviews Ursula K. Le Guin (2013), Paul Morton, The Millions
- Interview with Ursula K. Le Guin (The Author Hour, 2009), Matthew Peterson, The Author Hour