Poetry collection Hard Words published by Harper.
1982
“Sur,” a story that is not so much alternative history as crypto-history (the female explorers who are first to the South Pole keep their feat a secret), appears in The New Yorker in January. The New Yorker publishes two more of her stories this year, in July and October.
1984
Brian Booth founds the Oregon Institute of Literary Arts and invites Le Guin, along with Floyd Skloot and William Stafford, to become members of the advisory board.
1985
In January, The New Yorker publishes “She Unnames Them,” a story of a type that Le Guin has called a “psychomyth.” In October, publishes a major new science fiction novel, Always Coming Home, set in the future California. Novel involves collaboration with geologist George Hersh, artist Margaret Chodos, and composer Todd Barton, whose music of the imagined Kesh people is included on a cassette tape with the original boxed set (and creates problems with the Library of Congress, which objects to copyrighting the music of indigenous peoples). The book wins the Janet Heidinger Kafka Prize for fiction by an American woman and is a runner-up for the National Book Award. It also creates a stir among more conservative science fiction readers and writers for being what they consider antitechnology; Le Guin points out that the book is pervaded with technology, though the technology is predicated upon a sustainable use of resources. Publishes a screenplay, King Dog, based on a segment of Hindu epic the Mahabharata. Composer Elinor Armer composes song settings of poems from Le Guin’s collection Wild Angels. The two meet and begin to collaborate on eight musical compositions for orchestra and voices called Uses of Music in Uttermost Parts.
1987
Novella “Buffalo Gals, Won’t You Come Out Tonight” appears in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction. The story combines another critique of anthropocentrism with an homage to American Indian storytelling tradition.
1988
Publishes children’s picture storybook Catwings, illustrated by S. D. Schindler. The saga of a family of flying cats continues with Catwings Return (1989), Wonderful Alexander and the Catwings (1994), and Jane on Her Own (1999). The origin of the whole set is a winged cat drawn as a doodle by Ursula, which prompts the writing of the first story. The Catwings are reminiscent of a much larger (and thus much less feasible) race of winged cats in Rocannon’s World.
1989
Receives the Pilgrim Award from the Science Fiction Research Association for her critical contributions, following in the footsteps of scholars such as H. Bruce Franklin and Thomas Clareson as well as writer-critics like James Blish and Joanna Russ.
1990
A fourth Earthsea novel, Tehanu, is published by Atheneum/Macmillan in March. It reexamines themes from earlier volumes such as the maleness and (implicit) celibacy of wizards and the relationship between dragons and humans. Despite controversy over what some see as a revisionist history of a beloved fantasy world, the novel receives much acclaim (in 1993 in “Earthsea Revisioned” Le Guin says she always knew there was more to tell about Earthsea, but the fourth volume had to wait until she was ready to tell a story about women’s lives: “I couldn’t continue my hero-tale until I had, as woman and artist, wrestled with the angels of the feminist consciousness”).
1991
Tehanu wins Nebula Award and Locus Award. Publishes Searoad, a linked collection or story cycle about a fictional coastal town in Oregon. Wins Pushcart Prize for short story “Bill Weisler,” which is collected in Searoad. In the fall, is writer-in-residence for a semester at Beloit College, in Wisconsin, holding the Lois and Willard Mackey Chair in Creative Writing.
1992
Searoad is shortlisted for the Pulitzer Prize in fiction. Wins the H. L. Davis Fiction Award from the Oregon Library Association.
1993
With Karen Joy Fowler and Brian Attebery, edits The Norton Book of Science Fiction, which, though initially criticized for being too inclusive or “politically correct,” is widely used as a textbook not only in science fiction classes but also in courses in short fiction and fiction writing.
1995
Receives the World Fantasy Award for Lifetime Achievement. Publishes Four Ways to Forgiveness, a collection of four linked novellas set in a world within the Hainish universe. Charles retires from Portland State University.
1996
Publishes a volume of poetry, The Twins, the Dream (1996), in which she and Argentine poet Diana Bellessi translate each other’s work. Receives a Retrospective Tiptree Award from The James Tiptree, Jr. Literary Award Council for The Left Hand of Darkness.
1997
Short story collection Unlocking the Air is nominated for the Pulitzer Prize. Stories in the collection include the 1982 New Yorker story “The Professor’s Houses”; the title story in which the postcommunist revolution comes to Orsinia; and “The Poacher,” an exploration of what it means to be an interloper rather than the hero of a fairy tale. Publishes a version of the Tao Te Ching, which she describes as a rendering in English, rather than a direct translation. Though she doesn’t know Chinese, she is a lifelong student of Lao Tzu’s enigmatic text and of Taoist philosophy, introduced to both by her father. In producing her English version she consults many translations, loose and literal, and consults with scholar J. P. Seaton.
1998
Publishes Steering the Craft, a guide to writing based on her own practice and on the many workshops she has conducted. Her examples of excellence include Kipling, Twain, Woolf, and a Northern Paiute storyteller whose name is not recorded.
2000
The U.S. Library of Congress honors Le Guin as a Living Legend in the Writers and Artists category. Awarded the Robert Kirsch Lifetime Achievement Award by the Los Angeles Times. Publishes The Telling in September, the first new novel since 1974 to be set in the Hainish universe of her early science fiction. Many shorter works in the same universe have appeared over the years, including “Vaster Than Empires and More Slow” (1971), “The Shobies’ Story” (1990), “Another Story or A Fisherman of the Inland Sea” (1994), and the four linked novellas of Four Ways to Forgiveness (1995).
2001
The Telling wins the Endeavor Award for best book by a writer from the Pacific Northwest and the Locus Award. Le Guin is inducted into the Science Fiction Hall of Fame. Publishes Tales from Earthsea and the final volume of the Earthsea story, The Other Wind.
2002
Tales from Earthsea wins the Endeavor Award and the Locus Award. The Other Wind wins the World Fantasy Award for Best Novel. Receives the PEN/Malamud Award for Short Fiction. Fellow winner Junot Díaz acknowledges her influence. Participates in artists’ rallies against the Patriot Act, passed the previous year; she writes, “What do attacks on freedom of speech and writing mean to a writer? It means that somebody’s there with a big plug they’re trying to fit into your mouth.”