Thank you for being the conscience of writers everywhere. The one who stood up to the powers, who never turned her gaze away from the eclipse.
Thank you for writing the stories that became iconic paths for the rest of us to tread: “Those Who Walked Away from Omelos”, The Wizard of Earthsea, Left Hand of Darkness, Lathe of Heaven, The Word for the World is Forest, The Disposessed.
Thank you for leading us by the hand in childhood and on and never letting go though the precipices of reading were deep and broad.
Thank you for teaching us how to write by carving your runes on the pathstones, giving us The Wind’s Twelve Quarters and Compass Rose.
Thank you for letting us understand that science fiction could also encompass anthropology and archeology of the mind, that fantasy could have deep characters not just tropes, that stories could open gender and color doors, doors that let us into the future before the future even found us.
Thank you for hanging in eight-eight years and leaving us with years more of reading.
Go on dragon wings, we will follow.
Ursula K. Le Guin (October 21, 1929 – January 22, 2018)
–Jane Yolen