R.I.P. Ursula K. Le Guin ~ 1929 – 2017

Photo illustration by Lisa Larson-Walker. Photo by Beth Gwinn/Getty Images. 2001

I don’t know how many of you have heard, but literary icon and one of my personal idols, Ursula K. Le Guin passed away yesterday afternoon. She was the first woman to win the Nebula Award and Hugo Award for Best Novel, for her 1969 novel The Left Hand of Darkness. She went on to win these awards several more times throughout her career. This prolific and gifted writer wrote twenty more novels, and according to the New York Times, “a dozen books of poetry, more than 100 short stories (collected in multiple volumes), seven collections of essays, 13 books for children and five volumes of translation, including the Tao Te Ching of Lao Tzu and selected poems by the Chilean Nobel Prize winner Gabriela Mistral.”

Ursula’s novels made me realize that fantasy wasn’t always just about wizards and…