Thanking Ursula K. LeGuin

Ursula LeGuin presented a reading at Powell's Bookstore tonight. About four hundred people showed up, a full half of whom queued at the end to get books signed, and she was wonderful: brilliant, funny, dry, slightly self-deprecating but impatient with questions. Asked her favorite books, she said, "Too many to name." Asked about her process, she first scoffed that she has no process, said every book has a different process. But then she backed off a bit and added, "Listening, I think, is very important. I listen, and if there's a story that wants to be told, I make the space to tell it. I listen to hear what is in me, what wants to be written. I see writers spend a great deal of time saying, 'I have to write this, write that, write, write, write.' I think listening is underrated." Then she paused, laughed, and said, "But that's just me."

From her website: "She has published seven books of poetry, twenty-two novels, over a hundred short stories (collected in eleven volumes), four collections of essays, twelve books for children, and four volumes of translation."  

I waited afterwards for a chance to meet her and to tell her about the One Street project. She said, "What a wonderful idea!" I took with me a letter, explaining Blip and the project and leaving her my contact information, so she didn't have to recall details from a conversation in a crowded bookstore after a reading. Here are the salient parts of the letter:

"Liverpool, England. Gabian, France. Schull, Ireland. Auckland, New Zealand. Kerala, India. Zagreb, Croatia. Portland OR, USA. What all these places have in common is that your book with Roger Dorband, Blue Moon over Thurman Street, has inspired photographers and writers who live there (and in many other places) to create a series of pictures of one street. For some, it's the street where they live. For others, it's where they work or where they grew up. For one, it's the Braden River in Florida. For one, it's a footpath over Scottish hills where the main residents are deer, rabbits, and foxes. But for most, it's a city street, not unlike Thurman Street, where there are shopkeepers, tree trimmers, children, churches, and libraries."

I go on to explain what Blip is and how it works, and I conclude,

"We want you to know about this because we are grateful. I speak for two hundred or so people scattered all over the planet: we thank you for your brilliant idea, for Dorband's pictures, for the bits of the Bhagavad Gita, and for your poetry of the street where you live. We hope our work is worthy of your brilliant idea. Thank you for a project we all enjoy, a project swiftly becoming part of our lives, a project through which we hope we are growing as photographers, writers, and good neighbors."

More pictures of Ursula LeGuin signing books are here.