Ursula K. Le Guin was honored at the National Book Awards tonight and gave a fantastic speech about the dangers to literature and how they can be stopped. As far as I know it’s not available online yet (update: the video is now online), so I’ve transcribed it from the livestream below. The parts in parentheses were ad-libbed directly to the audience, and the Neil thanked is Neil Gaiman, who presented her with the award.
Thank you Neil, and to the givers of this beautiful reward, my thanks from the heart. My family, my agent, editors, know that my being here is their doing as well as mine, and that the beautiful reward is theirs as much as mine. And I rejoice at accepting it for, and sharing it with, all the writers who were excluded from literature for so long, my fellow authors of fantasy and science fiction—writers of the imagination, who for the last 50 years watched the beautiful rewards go to the so-called realists.
I think hard times are coming when we will be wanting the voices of writers who can see alternatives to how we live now and can see through our fear-stricken society and its obsessive […]
An elegantly simple speech. Thank you 🙂
WOW, what a beautiful speech and a point well taken. I hope her message reverberates throughout the publishing community in hopes that it will encourage younger writers what a gift it is – to be able to change the world with words (hopefully truthful words with scientific understanding). BRAVO to LeGuin.
P.S. I have had offers to be a copywriter to expand my income in retirement. I could not bring myself to do it because it just not something I can justify; I cannot be a person who promotes consumerism. I need the money, for sure, but I will not become part of what is wrong with our society. I will still try to just get books published for the purpose of changing our society for the better, using my imagination and insight and not some corporate agenda’s wanton greediness.
Enough said; Happy Holidays, and Happy New Year to everyone.
P.P.S. thank you Stephan, for all the great work you have done and are still doing to promote the good in our society