Reviews, Interviews, & Resources

Interviews

• NPR’s Jacki Lyden interviews UKL on “All Things Considered,” 26 April 2008. (Audio)
• Between the Covers: John J. Miller interviews UKL at National Review Online. 24 April 2008. [offsite link; audio interview]
• “A Princess Seeking a Voice,” interview by Cynthia Crossen at The Wall Street Journal. (12 April 2008)
• Karen Karbo interviewed UKL on 12 April 2008 for Live Wire. Oregon Public Broadcasting broadcast it live. It is now available as a podcast MP3. (10 April 2008; update 5 May 2008)
• “Breaking into the Spell,” An interview with Ursula K. Le Guin. Conducted by Alexander Chee at Guernica Magazine, February 2008. (8 February 2008)
• The Oregonian’s Steve Duin interviews UKL: “For Le Guin, the Journey Never Ends.” (5 February 2008)
• Interview for Spanish Science Fiction and Fantasy Magazine Fantasymundo — en castellano/in English. Conducted by Alejandro Serrano. (Link posted 4 February 2008)
• The Death Ray Interview with Ursula K. Le Guin, conducted by Guy Haley. Death Ray is an SF magazine that covers all aspects of science fiction, fantasy and supernatural horror in all media, and in great depth. It's available in the USA in Barnes and Noble and Borders, and in the UK in highstreet newsagents, WHSmith's, and supermarkets. Deathray #5, October 2007. Interview reprinted with the kind permission of Blackfish Publishing. (Posted 6 November 2007)
• Interview by Margarita Meklina (in Russian)
• “Wizard Oil,” by Carol Pinchefsky, Intergalactic Medicine Show, January 2007.
• Doce Moradas interview, conducted by Paola Castagno
• Femin magazine: The original questions and answers on which an interview published in the Japanese feminist magazine FEMIN was based — translated into Japanese by the interviewer, Chieko Akaishi.
• The Magician: article/interview by Maya Jaggi, online at The Guardian [Dec. 29 2005; offsite link]
• Chronicles of Earthsea — Q&A at Guardian Unlimited
• “Elsewhere, Inverted, Utopia” — Kurt Anderson interviews Ursula K. Le Guin for "Studio 360" at WNYC public radio. [offsite link to audio archive]
• Página/12: Entrevista a Ursula K. Le Guin, por Sandra Chaher [offsite link; in Spanish]
• West by Northwest Online Magazine: Life in the Wider Household of Being: An Interview with Ursula K. Le Guin, by Erika Milo
• “Driven By A Different Chauffeur: An Interview With Ursula K. Le Guin,” Conducted by Nick Gevers: "Ursula K. Le Guin has something of the quality of legend...." [continued...] [off-site link to The SF Site]
• Pacific NW Booksellers Association Interview, on the occasion of UKL's lifetime achievement award. [off-site link]
• Hour 25 archive: UKL's appearance, September 29, 2000. [off-site link]

Reviews of & Articles about UKL's Work

• "Le Guin is famous for creating alternative worlds (as in Left Hand of Darkness), and she approaches Lavinia's world, from which Western civilization took its course, as unique and strange as any fantasy. It's a novel that deserves to be ranked with Robert Graves's I, Claudius." Starred Review of Lavinia, Publishers Weekly, 24 December 2007
• More Lavinia reviews
• "The series is also concerned with power — or rather, the giving up of power. It's an unusual theme in a genre that sometimes seems to be only about military or magical power: getting it, fighting to hold onto it...." [continued]

  — Lisa Goldstein
  Strange Horizons
  19 October 2007

• Tehanu: A Return to the Source, by Sharada Bhanu. From her Doctoral Thesis.
• "With compelling themes about the soul-crushing effects of slavery, and a journey plotline that showcases Le Guin's gift for creating a convincing array of cultures, this follow-up to Gifts (2004) and Voices (2006) may be the series' best installment."

  — Jennifer Mattson
  Booklist Online, 1 October 2007
  [complete review]

• "A simple, beautiful rendition of the Tao Te Ching."

  — Hermester Barrington
  [complete review]

• "So, let's play. What if there were a writer who exhibited all the inventiveness of genre fantasy but played out the action with a cast of nuanced, gritty, convincing characters in a prose style that was as lean, distilled and rhythmical as poetry? What if there were a writer who could invite all those readers who duck at the mention of dragons into a fantasy world that was as compelling and familiar as any in realistic fiction? Speculate no more. That writer is Ursula K. Le Guin."

  — Sarah Ellis
  Reviewing Powers
  The Globe and Mail
  8 September 2007
  [complete review]

• "I really like your books. They are very interesting and very good. They have very good beginnings, middles and ends. That's one of the reasons I like them so much." — Ruth (Age 8, Santa Cruz, California)
• Two Trilogies and a Mystery: Speculations on the Earthsea Stories, by Margaret Mahy, Magpies, July 2002
• "She is the kind of writer businessmen hate most, producing challenging, unpredictable books whose meanings are too elusive to be easily controlled." — Meredith Tax, The Nation, January 28, 2002
• "Le Guin is a writer of enormous intelligence and wit, a master storyteller with the humor and force of a Twain. She creates stories for everyone from New Yorker literati to the hardest audience, children. She remakes every genre she uses." — Sarah Smith, The Boston Globe, March 17, 2002
• "The Cusp of Change": A Review by Maureen Scott Harris of Tales from Earthsea and The Other Wind: "...Le Guin gathers together the various threads and characters of this story with her customary skill..." [continued at National Post]
• Which Wizard Beats 'Em All?, by James Gorman: "...My favorite is not as famous as the ones I just mentioned. He is Ged..." [Off-site link to The New York Times, January 11, 2002 — registration is free]
• "Ursula K. Le Guin — Mutinous Navigator," by Vonda N. McIntyre
• "The Queen of Quinkdom," by Margaret Atwood, a review of The Birthday of the World and Other Stories. [offsite link to New York Review of Books]
• Review by Gerald Jonas of Kalpa Imperial, New York Times Sunday Book Review.
• "Stories Among the Ruins: Angélica Gorodischer's Kalpa Imperial" — review by John Garrison at Strange Horizons
• Review of Changing Planes by John Clute at Infinite Matrix
• Dream Sharing, by Joseph McElroy, The Village Voice
• "The King Is Pregnant" —: A new review, by Sarah LeFanu of The Left Hand of Darkness
• Gwyneth Jones' Top 10 SF by women writers, The Guardian
• A Kind of Magic, review of The Other Wind, by Nicholas Lezard at The Guardian
• Classic of the month: A Wizard of Earthsea, by Amanda Craig
• Tom Mouse
• The Birthday of the World
• The Telling
• The Other Wind
• Gifts
• Voices
• Powers
• Changing Planes
• Lavinia

Resources

• Bibliographies
• Partial List of Secondary Sources
• About UKL

Copyright © 2007 by Ursula K. Le Guin