This is an online only event streamed on the British Library platform. Bookers will be sent a viewing link shortly before the event and will be able to watch at any time for 48 hours after the start time.

Few writers enjoy the loyalty that Ursula K Le Guin inspired in her generations of readers. Her manuscripts feature in the British Library’s Fantasy: Realms of Imagination exhibition.

Le Guin's fantasy novel A Wizard of Earthsea, the first in a related group of six books and one short story, has sold millions of copies worldwide. Her major works have been translated into 42 languages and remained in print for over half a century.

She has won a National Book Award, seven Hugo Awards, six Nebula Awards, the Howard Vursell Award of the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the PEN/Malamud Award, and the National Book Foundation Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters. In 2000, she was named a Living Legend by the Library of Congress.

‘Distrust everything I say. I am telling the truth.’ (Le Guin’s introduction to The Left Hand of Darkness 1969)

Join Theo Downes Le Guin, Ursula’s son and literary executor; Julie Phillips, her biographer, and writer Nicola Griffiths (shortlisted for the 2023 Ursula K. Le Guin Prize for Fiction) for an evening of appreciation and exploration. The conversation will be chaired by writer and curator Sarah Shin.

This event accompanies the British Library exhibition Fantasy: Realms of Imagination 27 October – 25 February supported by Wayland Games and Unwin Charitable Trust: 





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