WATCH: Ursula K. Le Guin on Writing Fantasy as a Young Girl ‹ Literary Hub

The literary genius Ursula K. Le Guin is not only one of the esteemed foremothers of the current speculative renaissance in publishing and Hollywood, she is also one of the most brilliant and captivating authors of the past century in any genre. One of my favorite aspects of Le Guin's stories is that her treatment of race and racial differences stands sentinel over most of her white contemporaries, attesting to the prescience, power, and enduring significance of her work. Together with fellow Hugo and Nebula award winner Octavia E. Butler, she redefined the boundaries of her genre, sparking a transformation in speculative fiction that points to our current era of narrative representation, challenging who deserves to be seen, heard, and represented in the fantastic, and ultimately giving birth to our wide-ranging landscape of contemporary speculative fiction.