Reviews

In Conversations on Writing, Le Guin offers insight into her creative process, her career, activism and writing as a whole. She discusses the philosophy behind her work, as well as her thoughts on the genres of science fiction, fantasy, non-fiction essays and poetry.

I found Le Guin’s thoughts in this book to be very insightful as a young writer. Her discussion of how modern English education often doesn’t give people the tools they need to be successful writers, such as an understanding of grammar and literary devices, was very interesting and so true! She describes it as “being thrown into a carpenter’s shop without ever having learned the names of the tools”. I often find myself being told “Anyone can write! You’ll be a great writer, you just need to sit down and do it!” without ever being taught creative writing skills beyond the basics you learn in English classes.

It was cool to see how her views on her own work and the genres she wrote from the beginning of her career changed. In the beginning, she was very defensive of the misogyny in Earthsea, but in this interview collection she’s able to recognise her past mistakes and identify how she remedied them in the later books in the series.

It was also very interesting to see her style of prose come through in her speech. It really did feel like I was reading words spoken by the author of Earthsea or The Lathe of Heaven. All in all, it was amazing to read interviews given by my favourite author at the end of her life and career when she had been through and learned so much.

mariavdl's review against another edition

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informative inspiring lighthearted reflective medium-paced

3.0

simlish's review against another edition

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5.0

This is a wonderful interview collection, covering a wide range of years and points in Le Guin's life and career. They were well arranged to show some of her thought progressions -- she got a lot of questions about feminism and activism, for obvious reasons, and it was very interesting to see how her answers changed and developed over time. One thing I found very interesting was the way she spoke about Earthsea over the course of her life -- in the earlier interviews, she's very defensive of how male heavy the early books are, saying things like she "identified as the protagonist, not a man or woman" (not a direct quote -- I returned my copy before writing this review), and then in later interviews saying that she saw the misogyny of Earthsea as a huge mistake and talking about the books she wrote specifically to correct it.

As a child, my father was very into Earthsea (specifically after seeing the SciFi adaptation, he picked up all the books) and I tried to read them with him and was absolutely unable to get into Ged's storyline, specifically because of the lack of women. When he gave me... oh, I believe The Tombs of Atuan or Tehanu, I was able to get a foothold. It was really interesting to be able to connect that experience with her descriptions of her awakening feminism. It was also just generally interesting reading her thoughts about feminism -- she was very clear on not identifying as a radical feminist, because she was too much of a mommy for them. I try to read a lot of different types of feminist writing and perspectives, so it was really good to add hers.

I also really loved hearing about her approach towards writing and her career. And the wider world of science fiction/fantasy. She was just a really cool, smart lady, and reading her interviews was a joy.

alexandra_kat's review against another edition

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funny informative inspiring reflective fast-paced

5.0

theohume's review against another edition

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informative reflective medium-paced

3.0

abarrera's review

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4.0

Always a pleasure reading Le Guin. The book was very short for my taste. It's like a sweet temptation to go and read all of Le Guins writings (which I will). Short, nice, inspiring and easy. Sometimes she's too short on her answers and you're kind of waiting for more from her.

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