Meet the author

Ursula K. Le Guin.

Writer · United States · b. 1929

Ursula K. Le Guin: author of the Earthsea sequence — one of the foundational works of modern fantasy for older middle-grade and teen readers, spare, mythic and morally serious.

Ursula K. Le Guin (1929–2018) was an American author whose Earthsea sequence, A Wizard of Earthsea (1968), The Tombs of Atuan, The Farthest Shore, Tehanu, Tales from Earthsea, The Other Wind, stands alongside Tolkien and Lewis as one of the foundational works of modern English-language fantasy for young readers. Earthsea is spare, mythic, philosophically serious and quietly radical in its handling of names, power, gender and mortality. Le Guin's wider body of work, The Left Hand of Darkness, The Dispossessed, the Hainish cycle, is canonical adult science fiction (out of scope for this corpus). She won the National Book Award, the Hugo, the Nebula and Newbery Honor across her career. The benchmark serious fantasy author for older middle-grade and teen readers.