80! Memories & Reflections on Ursula K. Le Guin>

edited by Karen Joy Fowler and Debbie Notkin
Book design and cover design by John Berry.

Nominated for a Locus Award

$19.00 (paperback)
$9.95 (e-book)

80! Memories & Reflections on Ursula K. Le Guin was assembled as a hand-bound green leather book by Karen Joy Fowler and Debbie Notkin and presented to Ursula last year on her eightieth birthday. Contributions include fiction from John Kessel, Andrea Hairston, Sheree Renee Thomas, Ama Patterson, and Pan Morigan, and essays and poetry from Richard Chwedyk, Debbie Notkin, Eileen Gunn, Kim Stanley Robinson, Lynn Alden Kendall, Brian Attebery, Gwyneth Jones, Vonda N. McIntyre, Karen Joy Fowler, MJ Hardman, Ellen Eades, Paul Preuss, Molly Gloss, Sarah LeFanu, Victoria McManus, Jed Hartman, Ellen Kushner, Pat Murphy, Nancy Kress, Jo Walton, Una McCormack, Julie Phillips, Patrick O'Leary, Eleanor Arnason, Deirdre Byrne, Suzette Haden Elgin, Lisa Tuttle, Judith Barrington, Nisi Shawl, Elisabeth Vonarburg, and Sandra Kasturi.

Reviews

"It's as much a delight as you would expect ... While there are all sorts of fascinating anecdotes here [...] the most evident recurring theme is a rediscovery of one's own passion for reading, and the realization that one of the main sources of that passion is someone you can still talk to. As impressed as we are at these heartfelt tributes from names as resonant as [Pat] Murphy, [Nancy] Kress, [John] Kessel, Eileen Gunn, Karen Joy Fowler, Molly Gloss, Sarah LeFanu, Ellen Kushner, Jo Walton, Lisa Tuttle, Patrick O'Leary, Eleanor Arnason, and others, what this book finally reminds us of, and what it finally celebrates, is our own discovery of Le Guin's fiction, and if we're lucky, our own meetings with Le Guin herself....Le Guin is one of the few writers in our field about whom it might be said that discovering her is discovering parts of ourselves, and 80! is a wonderful and convincing testimony to that."
  —Gary K. Wolfe, Locus, Nov 2010

"This Feschrift is a good start on recognizing [Ursula K. Le Guin] for what she's become: 'our wise-woman, our seeress, a writer of infinite range and power.' "
  — Bloomsbury Review, Vol 30, No. 4, Winter 2010-2011.

"Written as a birthday tribute to one of speculative fiction's most beloved forerunners, this slim volume honors Le Guin with accounts that detail how several friends and former students came to love her work. Evidence abounds of Le Guin's generous, inquiring, and feminist spirit, and her rare ability to show us 'our own world, made strange and familiar.' Readers who are not well-versed with the writer's bibliography may wonder what this seemingly specialized, celebratory selection could offer; rewardingly, Fowler and Notkin include poetry, short fiction, and essays that build a cumulative portrait extending beyond the basic facts of a life and, less overtly, examines the relationship between reading and writing, twining the pleasures of absorbing language with the act of learning the craft. For those who already admire Le Guin, this is an enchanting accompaniment to her work; for others, it presents a convincing introductory argument about science fiction as an imaginative, literary landscape."
  —Publishers Weekly, Jan 2011

ISBN: 978-1-933500-43-0
Publication Date: October 21, 2010
(trade paperback) 238 pages