Who better to talk about the unique power of telling stories than one of our great contemporary storytellers, Neil Gaiman? One deep way Neil Gaiman and Ursula K. Le Guin are kindred spirits is how they both share an abiding interest in the strange, uncanny relationship between truth and fiction, truth and myth, the imagination and the real, the fantastic and reality, and the ways we seem hardwired, from childhood onward, to be adept at finding the enduring truths within stories that others have “made up.” Today’s conversation, as the final one in the Crafting with Ursula series, serves a double purpose. Yes, we do a deep dive into word magic, into the power and purpose of creating and telling stories, into the spells they weave and why. But we also celebrate Le Guin, the intelligence and music of her words, her spells, by having Neil Gaiman, one of the most mellifluous and recognizable narrative voices today, read excerpts of Le Guin’s work for us, from A Wizard of Earthsea to The Lathe of Heaven to Always Coming Home.
Whether you’ve been following the Crafting with Ursula series from the beginning, or whether Neil Gaiman is what brought you here for the first time, don’t miss the many other science fiction and fantasy conversations within the main Between the Covers show. You can go to the show’s homepage and sort the archive for “SFF” and not only find the three conversations with Ursula K. Le Guin herself, but also conversations with many others including Ted Chiang, Jeff VanderMeer, N.K. Jemisin, China Miéville, Nnedi Okorafor, William Gibson, Sofia Samatar, Neal Stephenson, Marlon James, Jo Walton, Kelly Link, Daniel José Older, David Mitchell and more.
If you enjoyed today’s conversation consider transforming yourself from a listener to a listener supporter. Each supporter receives a resource-rich email with each episode, can join our collective brainstorm, our collective dreaming of who to invite as future guests, and there are a wide variety of other possible benefits from the bonus audio archive to rare Le Guin collectibles. Check it all out at the show’s Patreon page.
Finally here is the Bookshop for today’s conversation.
The post Crafting with Ursula: Neil Gaiman on Word Magic & The Power of Telling Stories appeared first on Tin House.
Nnedi Okorafor : Remote Control
Vanessa Veselka : The Great Offshore Grounds
Tin House Live : Publishing, Power Structures & Creative Practice with Leni Zumas & Janice Lee
Natalie Diaz : Postcolonial Love Poem : Part Two
Alice Oswald : Nobody
Tin House Live : Writing Pop Culture with Shayla Lawson & Hanif Abdurraqib
Elisa Gabbert : The Unreality of Memory
Ayad Akhtar : Homeland Elegies
Natalie Diaz : Postcolonial Love Poem : Part One
Tin House Live : Getting Past the Gatekeepers with Mira Jacob & Kaitlyn Greenidge
Jenny Erpenbeck : Not a Novel : A Memoir in Pieces
Mary-Kim Arnold : The Fish & The Dove
Tin House Live : Queer Beatitudes with Brandon Taylor & Garth Greenwell
Jeannie Vanasco : Things We Didn’t Talk About When I Was a Girl
Tin House Live : Bassey Ikpi & Melissa Febos on the Anatomy of Melancholy
Lauren Camp : Took House
Joe Sacco : Paying the Land
Lidia Yuknavitch : Verge
Tin House Live : Lacy M. Johnson On Likability
Philip Metres : Shrapnel Maps
Create your
podcast in
minutes
It is Free
Lit Society: Books and Drama
Ex Libris
Write The Book: Conversations on Craft
The Story of Mankind
Just So Stories
Fresh Air
Myths and Legends