All posts tagged: Earthsea

Ekostories in the Earthsea series by Ursula K. Le Guin.

Crafting with Ursula: Writing Nature and Nature Writing

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I’m very excited to share a recent conversation I had with David Naimon, host of Between the Covers. A bit about the show: Between the Covers , a literary radio show and podcast hosted by David Naimon, is brought to you by Tin House. These long-form in-depth conversations have been singled out by the Guardian, Book Riot, the Financial Times, and BuzzFeed as one of the most notable book podcasts for writers and readers around.  I’ve been a big fan of David’s interviews for years, having come across his work through his three craft talks with Ursula K. Le Guin, which was later published as the book Conversations on Writing. (His own creative writing is also amazing.) So imagine my delight and surprise when he approached me to contribute to a new series called “Crafting with Ursula,” in particular around the subject of nature writing. Some of the stories we discussed, like “Direction of the Road” and the “Author of Acacia Seeds“, have been featured in the past here on Ekostories. Others, like “The Bones of the Earth” and “Vaster …

Lammergeir by Lip Kee

Lammergeier, Journeys to Earthsea

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Thrilled that my newest personal essay has found a home in the debut issue of Lammergeier, a literary publication named after one of the coolest birds around: “Lammergeier, as with so many artistic visions, starts with a bird. Lammergeiers eat almost exclusively bones. Using its large, powerful wings, the lammergeier drops bones from the great heights to crack them open and access the marrow inside. The lammergeier is also renowned for its plumage: brilliant rusty-hued feathers and dark, bristled faces created both by the luck of birth and the wear and tear of its mountain habits. We here at Lammergeier look for the beautiful vulture, the wonder uncovered digging through the grotesque, the sustaining viscera inside the carcass.” – About Us, Lammergeier “Journeys to Earthsea” delves into the trips I’ve made over the decades to what is arguably the most famous fictional archipelago: “Narveduen. The name is what draws my eye. NAR-VE-DU-EN. The sound is what holds true. Surrounding it, the isles of Derhemen, Onon, and Hille. South and west, the scraps of rock above …

Clouds and Cornfield

All My Best Words Were Hers

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My thanks to Entropy Magazine for publishing All My Best Words Were Hers, my essay exploring the legacy of Ursula K. Le Guin. Over the past several months, I’ve mourned her passing by reading every tribute I can find. Most touch upon her seminal works, on Earthsea and Omelas, on The Dispossessed and The Left Hand of Darkness. Yet few seem to speak to the wider breadth of her oeuvre, which ranged from critical essays and genre-defying short stories to translations of ancient texts and funny food recipes. Le Guin would be rankled at that, I think. This piece is intended to shine a light on her lesser known works, reorient her more famous pieces through my own lens, and showcase the woman behind and beyond the words. She would appreciate the gesture, I hope: “In the evening, my mom sends me a text: Are you ok? I saw one of her quotes @Twitter: ‘Go on and do your work. Do it well. It is all you can do.’ Gensher, of Way. A biological parent, delivering advice from a literary …

Dear Ursula…

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When I first began writing seriously a few years back, I enrolled in a local creative writing intensive program. During one of the workshop sessions, we were asked to read something we loved in order to figure out how great writing sounds. Naturally I settled on your writing and found a passage in my battered Ace trade paperback edition of The Left Hand of Darkness. Chapter 18 begins: “Sometimes, as I’m falling asleep in a dark and quiet room, I have for a moment a great and treasurable illusion of the past. The wall of the tent leans up against my face, not visible but audible, a slanting plane of faint sound. The susurrus of blown snow, nothing can be seen. The light emission of the Chabe stove is cut off, and it exists only as a sphere of heat, a heart of warmth. The faint dampness and confining cling of my sleeping bag, the sound of the snow. Barely audible, Estraven’s breathing as he sleeps. Darkness. Nothing else. We are inside, the two of …

Happy Birthday, Ursula K. Le Guin

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Today is the 86th birthday of author Ursula K. Le Guin, without whom I would have never wrote all the words on this blog, or any words in general, because I would have missed out on visiting worlds of wizards, dragons, aliens, Italians, anarchists, and ants. In light of this happy occasion, I’ve compiled the pieces I’ve written about her work over the years on Ekostories. To steal a passage from the introduction she did for James Tiptree Jr.’s Star Songs of an Old Primate: “Here are Some real stories.”