Ursula Le Guin: Five Ways to Forgiveness

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.”

2003

Translates science fiction novel Kalpa Imperial by Argentine writer Angélica Gorodischer. Publishes Changing Planes , a linked collection of partly satirical stories about people who slip between realities while waiting in airports. Named a Grand Master by the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America.

2004

Changing Planes wins the Locus Award for best story collection. Publishes Gifts , the first of three volumes of the Annals of the Western Shore , a fantasy for young adults, in September. Receives the Margaret A. Edwards Award for contributions to children’s literature from the American Library Association and delivers the May Hill Arbuthnot Lecture to the ALA’s subdivision, the Association for Library Service to Children.

2005

Gifts wins the 2005 PEN Center Children’s Literature Award.

2006

Publishes the middle volume of the Annals of the Western Shore , Voices , in September. The Washington Center for the Book awards Le Guin the Maxine Cushing Gray Fellowship for Writers for a distinguished body of work.

2007

Publishes the final volume of the Annals of the Western Shore , Powers , in September. Works through Virgil’s Aeneid in Latin, ten lines a day, in preparation for writing the historical novel Lavinia , a retelling of the Aeneid from the point of view of the hero’s Italic second wife, who is silent in the original version.

2008

Lavinia is published in April and wins the Locus Award. Powers wins the Nebula Award.

2009

Publishes Cheek by Jowl , a book of essays on fantasy and why it matters. Brother Karl dies on November 8 of cancer, age eighty-two, in Brooklyn, New York.

2010

Cheek by Jowl wins Locus Award for best nonfiction/art book. Is the subject of a festschrift, or celebratory volume, on the occasion of her eightieth birthday. 80! Memories & Reflections on Ursula K. Le Guin is edited by Karen Joy Fowler and Debbie Notkin and includes essays and original works by many writers and scholars, including Kim Stanley Robinson, Andrea Hairston, Julie Phillips, Gwyneth Jones, Eleanor Arnason, and John Kessel. Publishes Out Here, Poems and Images from Steens Mountain Country , with text, poems, and sketches by Le Guin, text and photographs by Roger Dorband.

2012

Publishes Finding My Elegy: New and Selected Poems , her sixth book of poems. Publishes two-volume edition of selected short stories under the title The Unreal and the Real . Receives the J. Lloyd Eaton Lifetime Achievement Award in Science Fiction at the University of California, Riverside.