My Year of Reading Every Ursula K. Le Guin Novel ‹ Literary Hub

I spent the better part of 2019 and 2020 immersed in the work of the great speculative writer Ursula K. Le Guin, and during this time, as my external world grew smaller, my internal world expanded. Even as I traced the same route through my neighborhood each day, I was sailing through an enchanted archipelago-and in a time when travel had become impossible, I voyaged among the stars.

Though in a way you could say Le Guin was always with me. My mother read the first three Earthsea novels when she was pregnant with me, and when I began to work my way through my parents' collection of science fiction and fantasy as a tween, those slim, sepiaed paperbacks with their iconic covers-depicting a dragon, a sail boat, and a castle upon a stylized island-couldn't help but catch my eye.