Speaker 1: Hello from Wonder Media Network. I'm Jenny Kaplan and this
Speaker 1: is Womanica. This month, we're talking about women of science fiction.
Speaker 1: These women inspire us to imagine impossible worlds, alien creatures,
Speaker 1: and fantastical inventions, revealing our deepest fears and hopes for
Speaker 1: the future. Today's Womaniquin is a novelist and poet. You
Speaker 1: could call her a science fiction writer, but that'd be
Speaker 1: like cramming an octopus into a pigeonhole. Tentacles will come
Speaker 1: out in all directions. Her genre defying work explores everywhere,
Speaker 1: from far off planets to an archipelago inhabited by wizards,
Speaker 1: and a utopian California that resembles the past. Let's meet
Speaker 1: Ursula k Legwin. Ursula was born on October twenty first,
Speaker 1: nineteen twenty nine, in Berkeley, California. Her father, Alfred, was
Speaker 1: an influential cultural anthropologist. Her mother, Theodora, was a writer.
Speaker 1: As such, Ursula's childhood was filled with storytelling and robust conversation.
Speaker 1: At dinnertime, Alfred would ask his four children philosophical questions
Speaker 1: and puzzles. Ursula, the youngest, was often overshadowed by her older,
Speaker 1: louder siblings. She was painfully shy, but she learned she
Speaker 1: had to be boisterous if she was going to be heard.
Speaker 1: By the time she was six years old, Ursula knew
Speaker 1: in her bones that she was going to be a writer.
Speaker 1: She wrote poems and fantasy stories. She and her brother
Speaker 1: pulled their coins together to buy pulpy sci fi magazines.
Speaker 1: She liked mythology and science fiction, but soon lost interest
Speaker 1: because she didn't like that all the stories were about
Speaker 1: white men conquering the universe. When Ursula entered high school,
Speaker 1: she felt awkward, lonely, and out of place. She felt
Speaker 1: a sense of belonging between the pages of books. Ursula
Speaker 1: spent her days at the public library, reading Charlotte and
Speaker 1: Emily Bronte, Thomas Hardy, Mary Shelley, and Jane Austen. She
Speaker 1: once cut up a book so she could lovingly gaze
Speaker 1: at a still of mister Darcy from the nineteen forty
Speaker 1: film adaptation of Pride and Prejudice in the privacy of
Speaker 1: her bedroom. In nineteen forty seven, Ursula traveled across the
Speaker 1: country to attend Radcliffe College in Cambridge, Massachusetts. She worked
Speaker 1: on the school's literary magazine, but it never accepted any
Speaker 1: of her submissions, and her peers left scathing unfriendly critiques
Speaker 1: of her work. Ursula graduated in nineteen fifty one with
Speaker 1: a degree in French and then went to Columbia University
Speaker 1: to earn a master's degree in Romance, literature of the
Speaker 1: Middle Ages and Renaissance. After that, she won a Fulbright
Speaker 1: fellowship to study in Paris. There she met and married
Speaker 1: Charles L. Guyin, another Fulbright scholar. For the next decade,
Speaker 1: while she raised three children and taught classes at Portland
Speaker 1: State University, Ursula tried to make it as a writer,
Speaker 1: but the literary world at the time was focused on
Speaker 1: confessional literature, realism, and memoir. Ursula had no interest in confession.
Speaker 1: Her strengths, according to her, were transformation and invention. Rather
Speaker 1: than try to fit into the literary canon of the time,
Speaker 1: Ursula would have to blaze her own trail through her writing.
Speaker 1: Ursula liked to try on different ideas and ways of life.
Speaker 1: Her first novel took place in an imaginary Eastern European
Speaker 1: country called Orsinia. In her made up world, she explored
Speaker 1: real world issues like communist repression and MacCarthy era politics.
Speaker 1: She submitted the book to Alfred Knopp, a publisher and
Speaker 1: family friend. He wrote back, this is a very strange book,
Speaker 1: but you're going somewhere. By the early nineteen sixties, Ursula
Speaker 1: had written five unpublished novels. In nineteen sixty six, she
Speaker 1: had her first success, a science fiction novel called Roucannon's World.
Speaker 1: Two years later, she published A Wizard of Earthsea. It
Speaker 1: was the first installment in what would become a trilogy
Speaker 1: about a society of wizards. The books were young adult fiction,
Speaker 1: but Ursula didn't use that as an excuse to dumb
Speaker 1: down her stories. The series' themes included the power of
Speaker 1: language and the importance of balance, inspired by her lifelong
Speaker 1: study of Daoism. In nineteen sixty nine, she released The
Speaker 1: Left Hand of Darkness. Again, Ursula explored the theme of balance,
Speaker 1: this time on a planet inhabited by beings who are
Speaker 1: genderless except for during periods of reproduction. For the book,
Speaker 1: Ursula won two major awards in science fiction, the Hugo
Speaker 1: and Nebula Awards. Her nineteen seventy one novel, The Laith
Speaker 1: of Heaven told the story of a man whose dreams
Speaker 1: could alter reality. It was adapted into a made for
Speaker 1: television film twice, once in nineteen eighty and again into
Speaker 1: two thousand and two. Throughout the nineteen sixties and seventies,
Speaker 1: Ursula suffered from periods of depression that made it hard
Speaker 1: for her to write, and the second wave feminism movement
Speaker 1: made Ursula rethink her work. Ursula had always written male
Speaker 1: protagonists to make her books more digestible for publishers and readers.
Speaker 1: She struggled to learn how to write as a woman
Speaker 1: rather than an honorary man. Ursula overcame this period of
Speaker 1: discomfort and dispiritedness. In the nineteen eighties, she produced some
Speaker 1: of her most daring and well regarded work, Like her
Speaker 1: feminist parable She Unnames Them and Always Coming Home, a
Speaker 1: part narrative, part pseudo textbook recording the life and society
Speaker 1: of the imaginary Kesh people in California. Sometimes her political
Speaker 1: messages were wrapped up in metaphor and subtlety. Other times
Speaker 1: it was like she was screaming through the page, losing
Speaker 1: patience with her readers. As she got older, she felt
Speaker 1: she had lost her stamina for writing novels and focused
Speaker 1: more on poetry in short stories. After spending decades in
Speaker 1: the literary world, Ursula became vocal about her criticisms of
Speaker 1: the publishing industry. In twenty fourteen, she traveled to New
Speaker 1: York City to accept the Distinguished Contribution medal at the
Speaker 1: National Book Awards ceremony. She had spent six months fretting
Speaker 1: over and rewriting her six minute acceptance speech. When she
Speaker 1: took to the podium, she didn't spend time thinking the
Speaker 1: organization for her medal or her family and confidence for
Speaker 1: their support. Instead, she admonished editors for choosing profit over creativity.
Speaker 1: I really don't want to watch American literature get sold
Speaker 1: down the river, she said. She also dedicated her award
Speaker 1: to her fellow science fiction and fantasy authors, who she
Speaker 1: felt had been excluded from literature for so long. The
Speaker 1: crowd gave her a standing ovation. Ursula passed away on
Speaker 1: January twenty second, twenty eighteen, in her home in Portland, Oregon.
Speaker 1: She was eighty eight years old. Over the course of
Speaker 1: her career, she wrote twenty novels, more than one hundred
Speaker 1: short stories, poetry, literary criticism, and children's books. All month,
Speaker 1: we're talking about women in science fiction. For more information,
Speaker 1: find us on Facebook and Instagram at Wamanica podcast special
Speaker 1: thanks to Liz Kaplan, my favorite sister and co creator.
Speaker 1: Talk to you tomorrow.