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ursulakleguin.com
Ursula K. Le Guin
@ursulakleguin.com
31K followers 72 following 390 posts
Official account for the celebrated author of novels, short stories, poetry, children’s books and essays.

https://www.ursulakleguin.com/
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“The island of Gont, a single mountain that lifts its peak a mile above the storm-wracked Northeast Sea, is a land famous for wizards.”

This 2005 Science Fiction Book Club edition of the first three Earthsea novels has cover art by Leo & Diane Dillon.
This cover of the Earthsea Trilogy shows Tenar and Ged in a boat, with a golden dragon curling around the back of the image. Tenar, who is pale with dark hair, sits, holding closed a red cape with lavender trim. Ged, who holds a staff and wears an amulet around his neck, has somewhat darker skin and stands; light emanates from his staff. The boat has eyes painted on the prow.
November 17, 2025 at 7:33 PM
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A magazine asked Ursula to write about a book that changed her life. "A book? One book?" she wrote on her blog.

You can read the whole post here: www.ursulakleguin.com/blog/100-a-b...
"Nobody can guess how a person’s life or a people’s fate may be changed by one book, or one poem, or even a single sentence."
November 12, 2025 at 10:57 PM
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At 4 pm this Friday, November 7th, join Theo Downes-Le Guin and Oregon Contemporary director Blake Shell for an introduction to A Larger Reality: Ursula K. Le Guin—part of the Portland Book Festival’s Cover to Cover program!

Details: www.oregoncontemporary.org/a-larger-rea...
A photo of a detail from one case at the A Larger Reality exhibition: Ursula's tote bag, a brown bag that reads "I have abandoned my search for truth and am now looking for a good fantasy." It's covered in buttons. A label in the foreground reads "1965-2018: Protesting and activism. Le Guin advocated for social change throughout her life, protesting events ranging from the Vietnam war to the removal of a nearby chestnut tree." Theo Downes-Le Guin stands under the replica oak tree at the center of the A Larger Reality exhibition, introducing the exhibition on its opening night. The tree trunk has small bookshelves which hold copies of Ursula's books for visitors to read.
November 5, 2025 at 11:13 PM
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The finishing touches to A Larger Reality: Ursula K. Le Guin were made last night - and now the exhibition is open and on view at @oregonconsumer.bsky.social! We hope you’ll join us Saturday, November 1st, for the opening reception. Details: www.oregoncontemporary.org/a-larger-rea...
Looking up at a wooden tree, a replica of the Mother Oak, built with shelves that hold copies of Ursula's books. The base of the tree, lit in purple, with piles of books and a small device that will play a recording of Ursula reading "The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas" at the press of a button. Two people add details to the scales of the large dragon mural created by Ursula Barton. A man holds a level up to a test decal that is taped to the wall, making sure it's level.
October 31, 2025 at 9:15 PM
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Coming next month: The 50th anniversary edition of The Wind's Twelve Quarters!

This design nods back to the original hardcover jacket, which was by Patricia Voehl. The new cover is designed by Jamie Lynn Kerner.

Harper Perennial publishes this edition on November 18th.
The 50th anniversary edition of The Wind's Twelve Quarters by Ursula K. Le Guin has a cream-colored cover with a central circular design. The circle is divided into quarters; the upper left is three arcs in pink, a divided green, and black; upper right is a dragon; lower right is the moon surrounded by clouds; and lower left is a wizard among knotted ropes.
October 24, 2025 at 4:24 PM
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Congratulations to Vajra Chandrasekera (@vajra.me), recipient of the 2025 Ursula K. Le Guin Prize for Fiction for Rakesfall!

Chandrasekera's book was chosen by authors Matt Bell, Indra Das, Kelly Link, Sequoia Nagamatsu, and Rebecca Roanhorse.
Rakesfall by Vajra Chandrasekera, with the Ursula K. Le Guin Prize for Fiction sticker on the cover Vajra Chandrasekera, photo by Sanjeewa Weerasinghe. The author sits at a white table, arms resting in front of him, wearing a tan jacket and a white shirt.
October 21, 2025 at 4:18 PM
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On Tuesday, October 21st—Ursula's birthday—we'll announce the recipient of the 2025 Ursula K. Le Guin Prize for Fiction! Join Theo Downes-Le Guin and guest host Ebon Moss-Bachrach on YouTube for a live announcement at 9 am PDT.

The announcement will happen here: www.youtube.com/@ursula.k.le...
The eight books shortlisted for the 2025 Ursula K. Le Guin Prize for Fiction are in a stack, with a note on top that reads "Prize winner announcement 10.21.25 9 am PDT." The books are North Continent Ribbon by Ursula Whitcher; Remember You Will Die by Eden Robins; The City in Glass by Nghi Vo; The Sapling Cage by Margaret Killjoy; The West Passage by Jared Pechaček; Rakesfall by Vajra Chandrasekera; Archangels of Funk by Andrea Hairston; and Blackheart Man by Nalo Hopkinson.
October 17, 2025 at 7:18 PM
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Today, The Word for World: The Maps of Ursula K. Le Guin opens at AA Gallery in London! Curated by Sarah Shin and Harriet Jennings, the exhibition presents a selection of Ursula's maps, including some that have never been exhibited before.
A photo of the entrance to The Word for World exhibition, with two banners hanging vertically down outside the doorway to a brick building with white-paned windows. A row of bicycles are parked in front. The banners are purple and white and say the name of the exhibition and Ursula K. Le Guin's name. A cord-wrapped rock rests on a vivid blue background next to a map of and program for The Word for World exhibition. A stack of copies of The Word for World book, which shows the title in vivid blue against a black cloth cover.
October 10, 2025 at 6:21 PM
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🌟 Shortlisted for the 2025 Ursula K. Le Guin Prize for Fiction 🌟 Remember You Will Die traces the lives of artists, activists, scientists, and more as they intersect with the existence of a yearning AI. Eden Robins weaves a polyphonic narrative that is intergenerational, art-filled, and subversive.
A photograph of Eden Robins' novel Remember You Will Die, which rests on a black metal shelf next to a small glass vase full of greenery: red berries, green and white flowers, and a shaggy sprig of foliage. “Profoundly mistrustful of her own legacy, Dante Pellegrino would have hated this belated obituary. But then again, such remembrances are not for the dead at all. They are for the living—the living now and the living to come. Remember us, we whisper into the ears of the future. Our mistakes have made you possible.” from Remember You Will Die by Eden Robins
October 9, 2025 at 6:53 PM
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🎉 Happy pub day to both Book of Cats and the newly reissued Searoad!

We will work on obtaining photo evidence of Pard with his latest bookish appearance, but in the meantime here are Bat (who matches the book) and Ziti (who is more curious about it).
A black cat curled up against a taupe sheet sniffs suspiciously at Ursula K. Le Guin's Book of Cats A long-haired gray cat, stretched along the back of a blanket-covered blue sofa, sniffs curiously at Ursula K. Le Guin's Book of Cats A copy of the new edition of Searoad, which has a cover detailed with stylized streaks of blue that turn into mountains and waves below the title, rests crookedly (oops) on a blue plush background.
October 7, 2025 at 8:14 PM
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Something new from this corner of the internet: a newsletter! It will be irregular, not too frequent, and full of Ursula-related news. The first one, which went out last week, contains a note from Theo Downes-Le Guin, explaining a bit of the why and the wherefore. Here's part of that note.
A Welcome from Theo Downes-Le Guin One of the great pleasures of my work as literary executor is the sense that we are creating a community around my mother’s writing and ideas. If I’m honest with myself, however, I know that this community already exists. Any time two people read the same book, and that book resonates with them, the potentiality for a community exists, and the chance that destiny will throw those two readers together increases exponentially. This is why text is a great tool for subversion, resistance, and revolution. So at best, I am slightly hastening this coming-together. Ursula’s dear friend, moral compass, and tech mentor Vonda McIntyre had the foresight to set up early accounts for Ursula on Twitter and Facebook, to discourage impostors. We didn’t do anything with the accounts until after 2018, because Ursula had no interest in the style of communication that socials demand. After she died, things changed. As part of my grieving, I wanted to talk and write more about her, to as many people as possible. (I also learned, over the time, that this is my job description as executor.) Instagram, because it is image-based, allowed me to share glimpses of her life without crossing the line of privacy and intimacy. Over the years, and with the deft guidance of my colleague Molly Templeton, we have created a tone (and a respectable following) on social media that my mother would have tolerated, if not embraced. I am certain that if she had ever jumped on Twitter (now, for us, Bluesky), she would have treated it as she treated her blog—a one-way channel that idiosyncratically alternated between intimate musings and fiery analysis of the political and ethical failings of society. I miss those tweets that never were. But it is not my job to try to simulate them—I’m not her, we have what she wrote, and we are fortunate for that. In any event, social media was never an Ursula thing. A newsletter, though—that’s an Ursula thing. I tell you this with authority, because among many grueling tasks immediately after she died, I was responsible for reviewing her inbox, to make sure no email went unanswered. In so doing, I found a window into the breadth and depth of her email reading—which included a lot of newsletters! She was no stranger to unsubscribe buttons, couldn’t abide a messy inbox, so I know what I found there was of value to her (and no, I can’t tell you; that does cross a line).
October 6, 2025 at 10:34 PM
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Hey, we know this one.
A photos of a question from Jeopardy reads "Ursula K. Le Guin's 'Lavinia' retells the story of this work by Virgil, but from the wife's point of view."
October 1, 2025 at 6:17 PM
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Ursula wrote in the introduction to this 1978 edition of Planet of Exile, “Once I was asked what I thought the central, constant theme of my work was, and I said spontaneously, ‘Marriage.’"

Cover art by Dan Sneberger, published by Harper & Row.
The 1978 Harper & Row edition of Planet of Exile has art by Dan Sneberger; it shows a hand rising out of a snowy landscape, grasping a long narrow rocket. The sky beyond the mountains in the background is a rich orange shading into blue near the top.
September 30, 2025 at 10:59 PM
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🌟 Shortlisted for the 2025 Ursula K. Le Guin Prize for Fiction 🌟 Nghi Vo’s latest novel, The City in Glass, is a story about deeply understanding and loving a place, and about the difficult, necessary, meaningful work required to rebuild when one’s world is irrevocably broken.
A copy of The City in Glass by Nghi Vo sits on a black shelf next to a small vase holding four brightly colored flowers. One of them is an orange very close to the orange of the flames on the book cover, which depicts an archway with two statues, behind which a city is in flames. “She had been given nothing. She had taken it, and it was hers to neglect and destroy if she so chose. Her family had learned that much from watching the humans that swarmed the world, that love could be a destructive thing. The angels understood love as destruction. She had chosen a different way to love Azril, and this destruction had nothing to do with her.” from The City in Glass by Nghi Vo
September 25, 2025 at 6:55 PM
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"Autumn" is the first part of "Six Quatrains," which appears in So Far So Good (Copper Canyon Press, 2018).
Ursula K. Le Guin's poetry collection So Far So Good: Final Poems 2014-2018, the cover of which shows a river in the foreground, with golden, rugged hills in the background. AUTUMN gold of amber red of ember brown of umber all September
September 24, 2025 at 9:22 PM
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Coming in May 2026: A new edition of The Dispossessed! This one is part of HarperCollins' new American Classics line, all of which have nifty graphic covers.

www.harpercollins.com/products/the...
The cover of HarperCollins' American Classics edition of The Dispossessed is primarily purple, with a text box in the middle containing the title and author's name - and the details "fiction" and "published 1974." A black circle, moon or planet, rises over the top of the box; a purple circle (also moon or planet) rises at the bottom, so that it slightly overlaps the design. The circles represent Anarres and Urras.
September 22, 2025 at 9:21 PM
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These covers are incorrectly credited to Yvonne Gilbert in some of the books; she illustrated an earlier set of paperbacks. Here's Wizard with her cover art.
The cover of A Wizard of Earthsea with art by Yvonne Gilbert, which shows a young man, dressed in layers of capes, in a small boat. He holds a staff and has one arm outstretched toward a glowing light.
September 17, 2025 at 8:39 PM
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Early ‘90s Earthsea paperbacks, art by John Jude Palencar.
The four books of Earthsea, clockwise from upper left: The Wizard of Earthsea has a purple background, with an inset painting showing a small figure in front of a city with one looming tower. The Tombs of Atuan has a blue background, and the inset painting shows a set of underground stairs, with a figure with a staff at the top, and another smaller figure, partly seen, in the foreground. The Farthest Shore has an orange background, and the inset painting shows a large dragon on a small rocky island, with a small boat at the shore. Tehanu has a slightly shiny deep red background, and the inset painting shows a dragon hovering over the sea in front of a woman standing on a rocky cliffside. On all the covers, the title and author's name take up as much space as the inset paintings.
September 17, 2025 at 8:39 PM
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This fall brings not just one but two exhibitions about Ursula and her work.

In Portland, A Larger Reality: Ursula K. Le Guin opens October 31st at Oregon Contemporary.

In London, The Word for World: The Maps of Ursula K. Le Guin opens October 10th at the AA Gallery.
Ursula K. Le Guin, wearing a white button-down shirt, sits amid a pile of cushions, resting her head on her fist. Image by Marion Wood Kolisch | Courtesy Portland Art Museum
September 16, 2025 at 4:27 PM
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🌟Shortlisted for the 2025 Ursula K. Le Guin Prize for Fiction🌟 Margaret Killjoy’s beautifully imagined coming-of-age fantasy explores acceptance, community, gender, power, & resistance through the story of a young trans protagonist who, with her coven, faces an unnerving threat to the natural world.
The Sapling Cage by Margaret Killjoy stands on a black shelf next to a small clear glass vase filled with an assortment of greenery that includes red berries, queen anne's lace, and a bit of blackberry vine. "There are three basic ways of enacting your will upon the world. There is action, there are words, and there is magic. A witch worth her cloak is versed in all three."
September 12, 2025 at 2:28 PM
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Detail of a charcoal portrait of Ursula by artist and friend James Brunsman, mid to late 1970s. Jim also illustrated Ursula's children's book Leese Webster, first published in 1979 by Atheneum.
A close-up of James Brunsman's charcoal portrait of Ursula K. Le guin
September 9, 2025 at 9:37 PM
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Andrea Hairston (@andreahairston.bsky.social) introduces and reads from her novel Archangels of Funk, which is shortlisted for the 2025 Ursula K. Le Guin Prize for Fiction.

For more about this year's shortlist: www.ursulakleguin.com/prize25
September 4, 2025 at 7:08 PM
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"Some Thoughts On Narrative" appears in Dancing at the Edge of the World (Grove Press, 1989).

groveatlantic.com/book/dancing...
"To learn to speak is to learn to tell a story." from "Some Thoughts on Narrative" by Ursula K. Le Guin, publishing in 1980
September 3, 2025 at 9:30 PM
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New from @raigverd.bsky.social: a Catalan edition of Lavinia, translated by Anna Llisterri, with cover by Tono Cristòfol!

www.raigverdeditorial.cat/cataleg/lavi...
The new Catalan edition of Lavinia, from publisher Raig Verd, has a cover in tones of blue and gold and white, with a central image of a woman in a drapey gown standing inside a gold circle. Beneath her, Greek warriors fight, owls sit on either side of teh book's title, and ships sail across the bottom of the cover.
September 2, 2025 at 9:57 PM
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🌟Shortlisted for the 2025 Ursula K. Le Guin Prize for Fiction🌟 In North Continent Ribbon, Ursula Whitcher weaves a complex picture of the planet Nakharat, showing how the politics of power plays out through the lives of individuals, & how collective resistance evolves within intimate relationships.
A copy of North Continent Ribbon by Ursula Whitcher sits on a black metal shelf next to a small vase containing one large orange flower, two small orange thistle-like flowers, and a sprig of greenery. "None of us played music: there was a Cypress Company rule against playing music at volume, while we were on station. The cynical said the rule curried favor with strict judges. The rest of us said music was asking for bad luck. If you sang too long to the bones of starships, something might try to answer." from North Continent Ribbon by Ursula Whitcher
August 28, 2025 at 7:22 PM