Transformation and Self-Discovery in the Writings of Ursula K. Le Guin

In observance of the Founding of the Institute 43 years ago, the path-breaking and visionary writings of Ursula K. Le Guin will be explored. Author of many novels, short stories, poetry, literary critiques, several children’s books and renditions of myths and legends, she pioneered in what she called “speculative fiction.” Thereby she expressed new possibilities for individual experience and visions of alternative political structures. Her well-known and much read Earthsea trilogy vivified human life as an “archetypal journey” with a search for identity and moral insight whereby the human potential for challenging the shadow of darkness could bring reconciliation of the opposition of good and evil. Thus, human societies could develop cultures that reflected the cycles of harmony in nature and rejected war and various forms of social discrimination.

Her creative and prolific writings over 60 years became a model for literary imagination and free-form narratives as well as a source of political debate for decades.

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