Catch fantasy tale trendsetter in town

Earthsea author reads from classic book at area libraries

By Molly Gilmore | For The Olympian • Published October 09, 2008

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Asked about the old advice "write what you know," fantasy and science fiction writer Ursula K. Le Guin laughs.

"I don't know very much about the world," said Le Guin, author of the fantasy classic "A Wizard of Earthsea." She will be in Olympia on Friday reading from her book, chosen as the subject for this year's Timberland Reads Together campaign.

"I have not led an adventurous life and done all those things that men writers do. I had kids and stuck around the house and taught French and really exciting things like that, but I knew what was going on inside my head. So I have always written about what I knew," she said.

This will mark the first time the author has done a public reading of "A Wizard of Earthsea," published in 1968. Arguably her best-known book, it's the first of six in the Earthsea series.

"Readings were kind of rare then," said Le Guin, who lives in Portland. "It was interesting to look at the book and figure out what I should read from it.

"I noticed one thing I had never noticed before," she said. "Parts of the landscape certainly do look like the Oregon and Washington coasts. ... I had never realized it, but I was writing about home all along."

These days, Le Guin, 78, doesn't do many public appearances. Timberland Regional Library has her for not one night but two. She'll read in Aberdeen tonight.

"This is probably the only time most of us will have a chance to see her," said library spokeswoman Leanne Ingle. "When she agreed to do two appearances for us, I was beside myself."

Le Guin said South Sound got lucky because it's close to her home. "Flying is so much harder than it used to be, and it isn't fun anymore."

Much of what Le Guin writes is set in invented worlds. In her new book, "Lavinia," Bronze Age Europe is seen through the eyes of a minor character from Virgil's "The Aenid." It also often was written from the perspective of a man.

"I began writing in the 1930s, and I began publishing in the 1960s," she said. "It was kind of a different world. They hadn't reinvented feminism at all, and a great many women writers were writing as men, about men because that's what books were supposed to be. They were all about men."