Words Are My Matter:
Writings About Life and Books, 2000-2016

Words Are My Matter
at Small Beer Press

Hugo Award!

2017 Hugo Award for Best Related Work:

Words Are My Matter: Writings About Life and Books, 2000-2016, (Small Beer). Worldcon75, Helsinki, Finland.



“First Time Ever that Two People Named Ursula Got the Hugo Award!!!” — UKL

Table of Contents

Foreword

Talks, Essays, and Occasional Pieces

The Operating Instructions
What It Was Like
Genre: A Word Only a Frenchman Could Love
“Things Not Actually Present”
A Response, by Ansible, from Tau Ceti
The Beast in the Book
Inventing Languages
How to Read a Poem: “Gray Goose and Gander”
On David Hensel’s Submission to the Royal Academy of Art
On Serious Literature
Teasing Myself Out of Thought
Living in a Work of Art
Staying Awake
Great Nature’s Second Course
What Women Know
Disappearing Grandmothers
Learning to Write Science Fiction from Virginia Woolf
The Death of the Book
Le Guin’s Hypothesis
Making Up Stories
Freedom

Book Introductions and Notes on Writers

A Very Good American Novel: H. L. Davis’s Honey in the Horn
Philip K. Dick: The Man in the High Castle
Huxley’s Bad Trip
Stanislaw Lem: Solaris
George MacDonald: The Princess and the Goblin
The Wild Winds of Possibility: Vonda N. McIntyre’s Dreamsnake
Getting It Right: Charles L. McNichols’s Crazy Weather
On Pasternak’s Doctor Zhivago
Examples of Dignity: Thoughts on the Work of José Saramago
Arkady and Boris Strugatsky: Roadside Picnic
Jack Vance: The Languages of Pao
H. G. Wells: The First Men in the Moon
H. G. Wells: The Time Machine
Wells’s Worlds

Book Reviews

Margaret Atwood: Moral Disorder
Margaret Atwood: The Year of the Flood
Margaret Atwood: Stone Mattress
J. G. Ballard: Kingdom Come
Roberto Bolaño: Monsieur Pain
T. C. Boyle: When the Killing’s Done
Geraldine Brooks: People of the Book
Italo Calvino: The Complete Cosmicomics
Margaret Drabble: The Sea Lady
Carol Emshwiller: Ledoyt
Alan Garner: Boneland
Kent Haruf: Benediction
Kent Haruf: Our Souls at Night
Tove Jansson: The True Deceiver
Barbara Kingsolver: Flight Behavior
Chang-Rae Lee: On Such a Full Sea
Doris Lessing: The Cleft
Donna Leon: Suffer the Little Children
Yann Martel: The High Mountains of Portugal
China Miéville: Embassytown
China Miéville: Three Moments of an Explosion
David Mitchell: The Bone Clocks
Jan Morris: Hav
Julie Otsuka: The Buddha in the Attic
Salman Rushdie: The Enchantress of Florence
Salman Rushdie: Two Years, Eight Months, and Twenty-Eight Nights
José Saramago: Raised from the Ground
José Saramago: Skylight
Sylvia Townsend Warner: Dorset Stories
Jo Walton: Among Others
Jeanette Winterson: The Stone Gods
Stefan Zweig: The Post Office Girl

The Hope of Rabbits: A Journal of a Writer’s Week

Reviews & Interviews

• Between the Covers, on Words Are My Matter and on writing nonfiction in general — Interview conducted by David Naimon, KBOO radio. February 2017
• New science fiction and fantasy books, by Michael Berry: a review of Words Are My Matter. San Francisco Chronicle. December 2016
• The legendary Ursula K. Le Guin remains fiery, relevant and influential with Words Are My Matter, by Ted Gioia. Dallas News. October 2016
• Words Are My Matter review at Booklist Online, by Michael Cart. “[W]hat she says of poetry—‘Its primary job is simply to find the words that give it its right, true shape’—might well be said of all the shapely pieces in this generous, edifying, and invaluable collection.” September 2016 [Requires login]
• Words Are My Matter, reviewed at Kirkus. “In a review of Kent Haruf’s Benediction, Le Guin remarks on a character’s ‘humor so dry it’s almost ether.’ That praise applies to Le Guin as well in a collection notable for its wit, unvarnished opinions, and passion.” July 2016
• Publishers Weekly review of Words Are My Matter: Writings About Life and Books, 2000-2016. “The wide-ranging collection includes essays, lectures, introductions, and reviews, all informed by Le Guin’s erudition, offered without academic mystification, and written (or spoken) with an inviting grace.... In a resonating essay, ‘What Women Know,’ Le Guin discusses the differences between stories told by men and women, remarking, ‘I think it’s worth thinking about.’ That’s this collection in a nutshell: everywhere something to think about.” July 2016
• “One of our best and most thoughtful writers presents a wide-ranging collection of essays, reviews, and talks.” — Publishers Weekly. June 2016
• More reviews at Small Beer Press