A Tribute to Ursula K. Le Guin (1929–2018)

I present this tribute in the form of a letter to Ursula K. Le Guin, with whom I corresponded for more than forty years. The letter expresses praise for her work and character that I wish I had shared with her more fully during her life. I specifically emphasize her ability to invite readers to question restrictive gender classifications and to consider the origins of their joys and fears. I highlight her courage, demonstrated not only in her attack on the misuse of power by Amazon but also in her most ambitions work, Always Coming Home (1985), which almost went unpublished because it did not fit any defined literary genre. I conclude with a tribute to her acts of generosity to the inexperienced young scholar I once was to the old Sidewalker she continued to advise into his seventies.