Ursula K. Le Guin - AbsoluteAstronomy.com

Overview

Ursula Kroeber Le Guin is an American author. She has written novels, poetry, children's books, essays, and short stories, notably in fantasy and science fiction. First published in the 1960s, her works explore Taoist

Taoism

Taoism refers to a philosophical or religious tradition in which the basic concept is to establish harmony with the Tao , which is the mechanism of everything that exists...

, anarchist

Anarchism

Anarchism is generally defined as the political philosophy which holds the state to be undesirable, unnecessary, and harmful, or alternatively as opposing authority in the conduct of human relations...

, ethnographic

Ethnography

Ethnography is a qualitative method aimed to learn and understand cultural phenomena which reflect the knowledge and system of meanings guiding the life of a cultural group...

, feminist, queer theory

Queer theory

Queer theory is a field of critical theory that emerged in the early 1990s out of the fields of LGBT studies and feminist studies. Queer theory includes both queer readings of texts and the theorisation of 'queerness' itself...

, psychological and sociological themes.
Le Guin was born and raised in Berkeley, California

Berkeley, California

Berkeley is a city on the east shore of the San Francisco Bay in Northern California, United States. Its neighbors to the south are the cities of Oakland and Emeryville. To the north is the city of Albany and the unincorporated community of Kensington...

, the daughter of anthropologist Alfred L. Kroeber

Alfred L. Kroeber

Alfred Louis Kroeber was an American anthropologist. He was the first professor appointed to the Department of Anthropology at the University of California, Berkeley, and played an integral role in the early days of its Museum of Anthropology, where he served as director from 1909 through...

and writer Theodora Kroeber

Theodora Kroeber

Theodora Kracaw Kroeber Quinn was a writer and anthropologist, best known for her accounts of Ishi, the last member of the Yahi tribe of California, and for her retelling of traditional narratives from several Native Californian cultures.Theodora Kracaw was born in Colorado and later moved to...

. In 1901, Le Guin's father earned the first Ph.D.

Unanswered Questions

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Quotations

It did not matter, after all. He was only one man. One man's fate is not important. "If it is not, what is?" He could not endure those remembered words.

Spoken by Gaverel Rocannon, Rocannon's World|Rocannon's World (1966)

Truth, as ever, avoids the stranger

Zove (master of the house) in City of Illusions (1967), p. 5

The artist deals in what cannot be said in words. The artist whose medium is fiction does this in words. The novelist says in words what cannot be said in words.

Introduction to The Left Hand of Darkness (1976)

My imagination makes me human and makes me a fool; it gives me all the world, and exiles me from it.

"The Creatures on My Mind" in Unlocking the Air and Other Stories (1996), p. 65

All of us have to learn how to invent our lives, make them up, imagine them. We need to be taught these skills; we need guides to show us how. If we don't, our lives get made up for us by other people.

The Operating Instructions in The Wave in the Mind: Talks and Essays on the Writer, the Reader, and the Imagination (2004)

To think that realistic fiction is by definition superior to imaginative fiction is to think imitation is superior to invention.

The Question I Get Asked Most Often in The Wave in the Mind: Talks and Essays on the Writer, the Reader, and the Imagination (2004)

What's to gain by silence?

Cannoc, in Gifts (2004)

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