Author of the Week: Ursula K. Le Guin!
Readers of the Gollancz blog should need no introduction to Ursula K. Le Guin. Nor should they need us to tell them how important she is to modern literature – both within genre and without. They certainly shouldn’t need us to tell them that, over a long and distinguished career, she has won a staggering five Hugos, six Nebulas, two World Fantasy Awards, three James Tiptree Jr Memorial Awards, a Theodore Sturgeon Memorial Award and more Locus Awards than you could count even if you took your shoes and socks off. All this week we will be celebrating the great Ursula K. Le Guin across our blog and social media platforms. Be sure to follow us on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram to make sure you don’t miss anything.
Ursula K. Le Guin was the first author to win both the Hugo and Nebula Awards for best novel twice – in 1970 for The Left Hand of Darkness and five years later for The Dispossessed. In 1995 she was given the World Fantasy Life Achievement Award, in 2001 was inducted into the Science Fiction Hall of Fame and in 2003 was named a SFWA Grand Master. And, in a long-overdue accolade from the literary mainstream, she was awarded the National Book Foundation’s Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters – an honour created to recognize individuals who have made an exceptional impact on the United States’ literary heritage.
Her acceptance speech was a work of art, in itself:
Apart from being one of the most lyrical, insightful, imaginative and important authors the SFF field has ever produced, she is that rarest of writers: one fêted by the literary establishment as much as by the SFF community. If anyone ever tries to tell you that SF or fantasy writers are technically inferior to their ‘literary’ counterparts, just thrust a Le Guin book into their hands and watch their pre-conceptions crumble (if they’re being honest). We are delighted to be Ursula K. Le Guin’s UK publisher and have a range of her titles available in print and eBook, including four (at the moment!) in the SF Masterworks series, and the two-volume Selected Stories:
You can find details of available print titles at Ursula Le Guin’s page on the Orion website, explore her available eBooks on the SF Gateway and read more about the author in her entry at The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction.