[2] Her writings received critical attention from mainstream critics, critics of children's literature, and critics of speculative fiction. Le Guin was born in Berkeley, California, to author Theodora Kroeber and anthropologist Alfred Louis Kroeber. [165], Alternative social and political systems are a recurring theme in Le Guin's writing. ", Le Guin read both classic and speculative fiction widely in her youth. [54] Outside the Hainish Cycle, Le Guin's use of a female protagonist in The Tombs of Atuan, published in 1971, was described as a "significant exploration of womanhood". [213] Suzanne Reid wrote that at the time The Left Hand of Darkness was written, Le Guin's ideas of androgyny were unique not only to science fiction, but to literature in general. A lover of mythology, Le Guin went on to attend Radcliffe College, and later graduated with an MA from Columbia University. Since 1958, Le Guin has lived in Portland, Oregon, with her husband Charles Le Guin, whom she married in Paris in 1953. For more information, please contact Special Collections at Portland State University Library at: specialcollections@pdx.edu or (503) 725-9883. Le Guin died suddenly and peacefully Monday at her home in Portland, Oregon, after several weeks of health concerns, her son, Theo Downes-Le Guin said Tuesday. Le Guin's writing was enormously influential in the field of speculative fiction, and has been the subject of intense critical attention. She was fond of myths and legends, particularly Norse mythology, and of Native American legends that her father would narrate. He describes his view of Portland State's development from a small college to a large urban university, the professional, social, and cultural environments of the downtown campus, and the founding of pioneering academic programs such as University Studies and the Honors College. Birthday: October 21, 1929 ( Libra) Born In: Berkeley, California, United States 18 4 Novelists #116 Literary Critics #2 Science Fiction Writers #12 Quick Facts Also Known As: Ursula Kroeber Le Guin Died At Age: 88 Family: Spouse/Ex-: Charles Le Guin (m. 1953) father: A. L. Kroeber mother: Theodora Kroeber In subsequent printings, the story was published under her full name. [149], Le Guin explores coming of age, and moral development more broadly, in many of her writings. [211] The notion that names can exert power is a theme in the Earthsea series; critics have suggested that this inspired Hayao Miyazaki's use of the idea in his 2001 film Spirited Away. Lemman left PSU in 1974 to become Vice Chancellor of the Oregon University System and served with the office for over 15 years, including acting as interim chancellor from 1987 to 1988 and interim president of Oregon Institute of Technology from 1990 to 1991. The writer Ursula K Le Guin, who has died aged 88, presided over American science fiction for nearly half a century. Poets, visionaries the realists of a larger reality. Other authors she enjoyed were Lord Dunsany and Lewis Padgett. [47] The first two were each published as half of an "Ace Double": two novels bound into a paperback and sold as a single low-cost volume. Le Guin recalls his experience as a member of the Portland State faculty starting in the 1950s. Copyright. A Wizard of Earthsea, published in 1968, was a fantasy novel written initially for teenagers. Throughout her career, she broke barriers for women writers while. Her parents were Alfred Kroeber, a prominent and influential American anthropologist, and the writer Theodora Kroeber, widely known for her accounts of Ishi, the last member of the Yahi tribe in California. Special Collections & University Archives [226], Le Guin's novel The Left Hand of Darkness was adapted for the stage in 1995 by Chicago's Lifeline Theatre. [180][181], Le Guin received rapid recognition after the publication of The Left Hand of Darkness in 1969, and by the 1970s she was among the best known writers in the field. | | Public History Commons, Home The play opened May 2, 2013, and ran until June 16, 2013, in Portland, Oregon. Her reputation as an author of the first rank, and her role as ambassador. Copyright, Special Collections & University Archives. > "[35][36] In a speech at the 2014 National Book Awards, Le Guin criticized Amazon and the control it exerted over the publishing industry, specifically referencing Amazon's treatment of the Hachette Book Group during a dispute over ebook publication. Le Guin once recalled that their summer house was "an old, tumble-down ranch in the Napa Valley . Very, very fattening. She later said that science fiction did not have much impact on her until she read the works of Theodore Sturgeon and Cordwainer Smith, and that she had sneered at the genre as a child. The inaugural shortlist was announced on July 28, 2022. She wed historian and fellow Fulbright scholar Charles Le. [18] They married in Paris in December 1953. The stamp was designed by Donato Gionacola. Federal Tax ID 93-0391599. Those two joined the Tap Dance (five), Mystery Message (one) and Western Wear (four) stamps (all presented in last month's journal . [85] Her 1996 collection Unlocking the Air and Other Stories was one of three finalists for the 1997 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. She studied at Radcliffe College and Columbia University. Two releases in late July were single issues, one featuring author and poet Ursula K. Le Guin and the other featuring Raven Story, an important traditional story among Native Americans of the Pacific Northwest. Her son, Theo Downes-Le Guin, confirmed the death. "You decided to deal with the devil", she wrote in her resignation letter. In 2018, Le Guin died of a heart attack (White, 2016). Remembering Portland State [86] The volume examined unconventional ideas about gender, as well as anarchist themes. All five of the stories explored freedom and rebellion within a slave society. [6] Le Guin's own literary criticism proved influential; her 1973 essay "From Elfland to Poughkeepsie" led to renewed interest in the work of Kenneth Morris, and eventually to the publication of a posthumous novel by Morris. An exhibition showcasing the work of our prize winners will be on view at the Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art at Portland State University from February 28 through April 29, 2023. The best-selling writer passed away on Monday at her home in Portland, Oregon, after a. In this interview with Heather O. Petrocelli on May 16, 2017, Dr. Ursula K. Le Guin was born Ursula Kroeber in Berkeley, California, on October 21, 1929.Her father, Alfred Louis Kroeber (1876-1960), was an anthropologist at the University of California, Berkeley. Many of her stories used anthropologists or cultural observers as protagonists, and Taoist ideas about balance and equilibrium have been identified in several writings. [50][51] A coming of age story set in the fictional archipelago of Earthsea, the book received a positive reception in both the U.S. and Britain. Tolkien. Le Guin taught writing workshops from Vermont to Australia, including those at Pacific University in Forest Grove and Portland State University, where she was a frequent teacher at Haystack, and at Fishtrap in Wallowa County. As a Vanport Extension Center student, he had close relationships with many faculty, including VEC founder Stephen Epler. For the past 57 years, one of the most original imaginations ever to grace American letters has lived in a hundred-year-old house built from a kit from Sears. Home [2][40] Her books sold many millions of copies, and were translated into more than 40 languages; several remain in print many decades after their first publication. Photographed in Portland, OR, USA, September 18 . A member of the class of 1947 of Berkeley High School, Le Guin was the daughter of anthropologists Alfred L. Kroeber and Theodora Quinn Kroeber. Dr. A transcript of this interview is available for download. In this interview with Heather O. Petrocelli on May 16, 2017, Dr. Ursula K. Le Guin died in Portland on January 22, 2018. After Le Guin's death in 2018, writer Michael Chabon referred to her as the "greatest American writer of her generation", and said that she had "awed [him] with the power of an unfettered imagination". https://www.ursulakleguin.com/. The fledgling college was still small in 1959, but Portland State was fertile ground for intellectual collaboration and camaraderie among faculty across academic departments. They raised three children. In recent novels, such as The Other Wind, she grapples with aging and death. ) The year Dr. . Why in the future would we assume they are? It was the first of her . > Fantasy novelist Ursula K. Le Guin died Monday afternoon in her Portland, Oregon, home, her son Theo Downes-Le Guin said. Born in Berkeley, California, on October 21, 1929, Le Guin attended both Radcliffe College and Columbia University and was a Fulbright Scholar in Paris. Dr. Charles A. The University Archives has teamed with the Retirement Association of Portland State (RAPS) and other campus stakeholders in an ongoing effort to capture the first-person insight of those instrumental to the development and success of Portland State. [74], Between 1979, when she published Malafrena, and 1994, when the collection A Fisherman of the Inland Sea was released, Le Guin wrote primarily for a younger audience. Le Guin attended public schools in Berkeley, graduated from Radcliffe College, earned a Masters degree at Columbia University, and began pursuing a doctorate in French and Italian Renaissance literature. [68], Le Guin published a variety of work in the second half of the 1970s. A USPS Tribute Video to Le Guin can be viewed here on Facebook. Le Guin in Paris during their Fulbright Fellowships 1958 Moves with her husband and children to Portland, thanks to Charles's teaching position at Portland State College (now Portland State University) 1968 Publishes A Wizard of Earthsea [75] In 1985 she published the experimental work Always Coming Home. [33][34], In December 2009, Le Guin resigned from the Authors Guild in protest over its endorsement of Google's book digitization project. Article. In April 2000, the U.S. Library of Congress named Le Guin a Living Legend in the "Writers and Artists" category for her significant contributions to America's cultural heritage. [40][69][70] She also published Very Far Away from Anywhere Else, a realistic novel for adolescents,[71] as well as the collection Orsinian Tales and the novel Malafrena in 1976 and 1979, respectively. [63][64] Several of her speculative fiction short stories from the period, including her first published story, were later anthologized in the 1975 collection The Wind's Twelve Quarters. [124][125] A number of science fiction authors have objected to the term "soft science fiction", describing it as a potentially pejorative term used to dismiss stories not based on problems in physics, astronomy, or engineering, and also to target the writing of women or other groups under-represented in the genre. She started writing in her sixties and became a successful author. The U.S. Library of Congress named her a Living Legend in 2000, and in 2014, she won the National Book Foundation Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters. This interview was recorded at the Portland State University Library on February 21, 2019. This includes an equilibrium between land and sea, implicit in the name "Earthsea", between people and their natural environment,[113] and a larger cosmic equilibrium, which wizards are tasked with maintaining. [8][10][11], Le Guin had three older brothers: Karl, who became a literary scholar, Theodore, and Clifton. [142] Le Guin's portrayal of gender in Earthsea was also described as perpetuating the notion of a male-dominated world; according to the Encyclopedia of Science Fiction, "Le Guin saw men as the actors and doers in the [world], while women remain the still centre, the well from which they drink". Their summer retreat, an old ranch named "Kishamish" in the hills of Napa Valley, was a gathering place for scientists, writers, students, and California Indians. She argued that the term "soft science fiction" was divisive, and implied a narrow view of what constitutes valid science fiction. [3] Le Guin's transgression of conventional boundaries of genre led to literary criticism of Le Guin becoming "Balkanized", particularly between scholars of children's literature and speculative fiction. [61] Her 1974 novel The Dispossessed again won both the Hugo and the Nebula awards for best novel, making her the first person to win both awards for each of two books. It's late 2014 and Le Guinthe writer who invented . Printing is not supported at the primary Gallery Thumbnail page. She expressed a deep interest in Taoism and Buddhism, saying that Taoism gave her a "handle on how to look at life" during her adolescent years. > [111][112] Many of Le Guin's protagonists, including in The Lathe of Heaven, embody the Taoist ideal of leaving things alone. [4] She won the Hugo Award again in 1973 for The Word for World is Forest. Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1990. [12] The Kroeber family had a number of visitors, including well-known academics such as Robert Oppenheimer; Le Guin would later use Oppenheimer as the model for Shevek, the physicist protagonist of The Dispossessed. [5][9][182] Her work received intense academic attention; she has been described as being the "premier writer of both fantasy and science fiction" of the 1970s,[183] the most frequently discussed science fiction writer of the 1970s,[184] and over her career, as intensively studied as Philip K. (I think Tom Mullen agrees with this. He joined the faculty of Portland State College in 1959, when most of the campus classrooms, offices, and facilities were still located in the former Lincoln High School Building in downtown Portland, and the college's first new building, Cramer Hall, was still only partially built. A modified version originally ran in the SFWA Singularity #71. Portland ended up being the couple's permanent home, but for a couple of sojourns Ursula made to London when she received further Fulbright research grants . [229] In 2013, the Portland Playhouse and Hand2Mouth Theatre produced a play based on The Left Hand of Darkness, directed and adapted by Jonathan Walters, with text written by John Schmor. Le Guin is Professor Emeritus of History at Portland State University, where he taught for over thirty-five years. [89] She also revisited gender relations in Earthsea in Tehanu, published in 1990. [2][119] In 1976, literature scholar George Slusser criticized the "silly publication classification designating the original series as 'children's literature'",[120] while in Barbara Bucknall's opinion Le Guin "can be read, like Tolkien, by ten-year-olds and by adults. But that didn't have too much effect on me. Private memorial services for her were held in Portland. On their return to the United States, she abandoned her graduate studies to raise a family; the Le Guins eventually settled in Portland, where Charles Le Guin taught history at Portland State . Le Guin moved West in 1956 and to Portland State University in 1959, where he taught the French Revolution along with many other topics, ranging from the history of Australia and New Zealand to Canada. [14][100], The discipline of cultural anthropology had a powerful influence on Le Guin's writing. 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