Maybe this is the dark part of the tunnel and we are going to figure out how to do it, and how to pay writers some kind of decent return for their writing, but at the moment - I don’t teach writing classes anymore, and I’m really glad I don’t, because I would feel very strange about telling people, “Go out there and be a writer, and make a living from it.” I mean, ha. I mean, I think corporate control has just increased as publishing goes into terminal panic about how to handle e-publishing. Have things changed at all - for better or worse - since you wrote that article? Wired: In 2008, you wrote an article in Harper’s called “ Staying Awake: Notes on the Alleged Decline of Reading” in which you lamented corporate control of publishing. I get a lot of moral guidance from reading novels, so I guess I expect my novels to offer some moral guidance, but they’re not blueprints for action, ever. I’m not a preacher, I’m a fiction writer. Le Guin: I do try to separate my personal activism - showing up at a demonstration or something - from what I write. Wired: Did you write any of those books intending to inspire action, or was it purely artistic? I am proud and happy that a book - and actually a book printed quite a long time ago now - is still making some waves and being of some use to people thinking about this stuff. Wired: It’s been reported that some of the protesters at Occupy Oakland have been carrying shields in the image of books, including your novel The Dispossessed. Or listen to the interview in Episode 65 of the Geek’s Guide to the Galaxy podcast (above), which also features a discussion between hosts John Joseph Adams and David Barr Kirtley and guest geek Rajan Khanna about the life and works of Bradbury. Le Guin below, in which she gives warnings to new writers, discusses some of her best-loved books, and shares her memories of Philip K. Read our complete interview with Ursula K.

“I don’t teach writing classes anymore,” says Le Guin, “and I’m really glad I don’t, because I would feel very strange about telling people, ‘Go out there and be a writer, and make a living from it.’ I mean, ha.” Still, the fact remains that these are dire times for writers, and things are getting worse all the time. And her campaign against Google Books over what she calls a “tremendous rip-off” has met with some success in the courts. She’s managed to fend off such meddling with her work … for now. “There was an increasing pressure to make them more like Harry Potter,” says Le Guin in this week’s episode of the Geek’s Guide to the Galaxy podcast. Recent years have seen the 82-year-old writer engaged in numerous clashes with the powers that be, from Google and Hollywood to the literary establishment and an increasingly corporate publishing industry, which, despite her celebrated career, wants to make fundamental changes to the books she writes.

The dispossessed by ursula k leguin