Later in her career Le Guin was also recognized her contributions to literature more generally. In April 2000 the U.S. Library of Congress made Le Guin a Living Legend in the "Writers and Artists" category for her significant contributions to America's cultural heritage. The American Library Association granted her the annual Margaret Edwards Award in 2004, and also selected her to deliver the annual May Hill Arbuthnot Lecture. The Edwards Award recognizes one writer and a particular body of work: the 2004 panel cited the first four "Earthsea" volumes, "The Left Hand of Darkness" and "The Beginning Place". The panel said that Le Guin "has inspired four generations of young adults to read beautifully constructed language, visit fantasy worlds that inform them about their own lives, and think about their ideas that are neither easy nor inconsequential". At its 2009 convention, the Freedom From Religion Foundation awarded the Emperor Has No Clothes Award to Le Guin. A collection of Le Guin's works was published by the Library of America in 2016, an honor only rarely given to living writers. The National Book Foundation awarded Le Guin its Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters, stating that she had "defied conventions of narrative, language, character, and genre, and transcended boundaries between fantasy and realism to forge new paths for literary fiction". The American Academy of Arts and Letters made her a member in 2017.
Le Guin strongly influenced the field of speculative fiction. Jo Walton argued that Le Guin was important in both making the genre more open and accepting of new ideas, and in helping genre writers get mainstream success. "A Wizard of Earthsea" introduced the idea of a "wizard school", which would later be made more famous by the "Harry Potter" series of books, and with popularizing the trope of a boy wizard, also present in "Harry Potter".
Le Guin created the word "ansible" for an instantaneous interstellar communication device in 1966. Several other writers, including Orson Scott Card and Neil Gaiman, used the word later. The notion that names can exert power is also present in Hayao Miyazaki's 2001 film "Spirited Away"; critics have suggested that that idea started with Le Guin's Earthsea series.
Le Guin's works have been adapted for radio, film, television, and theater.
Her 1971 novel "The Lathe of Heaven" has been adapted twice, in 1979 by WNET with Le Guin's participation, and the in 2002 by the A&E Network. In a 2008 interview, she said 1979 adaptation is "the only good adaptation to" a movie of her work to date. In the early 1980s Hayao Miyazaki asked to create an animated adaptation of Earthsea. Le Guin, who was unfamiliar with his work and anime in general, initially turned down the offer, but later accepted after seeing "My Neighbor Totoro". The third and fourth Earthsea books were used as the basis of "Tales from Earthsea", released in 2006. Miyazaki's son, Gorō Miyazaki directed the movie, not Hayao Miyazaki himself. Le Guin was disappointed by the change. Le Guin was positive about how the movie looked. She wrote that "much of it was beautiful", but she did not like the moral sense of the movie. She disliked the physical violence, especially the death of a villain as the movie's ending. In 2004 the Sci Fi Channel adapted the first two books of the Earthsea trilogy as the miniseries "Legend of Earthsea". Le Guin was highly critical of the adaptation, calling it a "far cry from the Earthsea I envisioned", objecting to the use of white actors for her red-, brown-, or black-skinned characters.
Le Guin's novel "The Left Hand of Darkness" and novella "Paradises Lost" have both been adapted for theater. In 1995, Chicago's Lifeline Theatre presented its adaptation of "The Left Hand of Darkness". Reviewer Jack Helbig at the Chicago Reader wrote that the "adaptation is intelligent and well crafted but ultimately unsatisfying", mainly because it is extremely difficult to compress a complex 300-page novel into a two-hour stage presentation. She also said she was better pleased with stage adaptations, including "Paradises Lost", than screen adaptations of her work till date. In 2013, the Portland Playhouse and Hand2Mouth Theatre produced a stage adaptation of "The Left Hand of Darkness", directed and adapted by Jonathan Walters, with text adapted by John Schmor. The play opened May 2, 2013, and ran until June 16, 2013, in Portland, Oregon.
"Paradises Lost" was adapted into an opera at the University of Illinois. The opera was composed by Stephen A. Taylor; the libretto has been attributed both to Kate Gale and to Marcia Johnson. Adapted in 2005, the opera premiered in April 2012. Le Guin described the effort as a "beautiful opera" in an interview, and expressed hopes that it would be picked up by other producers.
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Jan van Eyck
Jan van Eyck or Johannes de Eyck () (before c. 1395 – before 9 July 1441) was an early Dutch painter active in Bruges. He is thought to be one of the best Northern European painters of the 15th century. He was interested in art since he was a child and was encouraged in this career by his older brother, Hubert.
Awana
Awana (an acronym for Approved Workmen Are Not Ashamed, from 2 Timothy 2:15), is an international evangelical non-profit organization. It was founded in 1950. Its headquarters is in Streamwood, Illinois. It was founded by Baptist minister Arthur Rorheim in 1950.
Dwight L. Moody
Dwight Lyman (D.L.) Moody (February 5, 1837 – December 22, 1899) was an American evangelist and publisher. He started the Moody Church, Northfield School and Mount Hermon School in Massachusetts (now the Northfield Mount Hermon School), the Moody Bible Institute and Moody Publishers.
Fletcher Christian
Fletcher Christian (September 25, 1764 - 1793) was an English seaman on "HMS Bounty" when it sailed to Tahiti to collect breadfruit trees in 1787. He led a mutiny (take over) to stop Lieutenant William Bligh returning to England. (See Mutiny on the Bounty). He left Bligh and 18 seaman in a small boat, and went back to Tahiti in the "Bounty". Christian and some of the other sailors then sailed to Pitcairn Island to live. Christian was later killed in a fight between the Tahitian men and the seamen.
Christian was born in 1764 at the family home of "Moorland Close", near Brigham, Cumbria. He was one of 10 children of Charles Christian and Ann Dixon. He could trace his ancestry back to William the Conqueror. The name Christian is an English way of saying the Manx name "McCrystyn". Fletcher's mother came from Cumberland and he was named after his grandmother, Mary Fletcher. After his father died, Christian went to sea. He was 18 years old. He was a sailor on the ship 'Cambridge'. William Bligh was also on the ship. Christian later sailed on two trips with Bligh to Jamaica on the ship 'Britannia'.
After the mutiny, Christian wanted to settle on the island of Tubuai. The sailors were scared of the natives who lived on the island. The sailors went back to Tahiti. Christian married Maimiti, the daughter of one of the chiefs on June 16, 1789. He then left Tahiti with 8 of the mutineers, 13 Tahitian women and six men. They sailed to the remote Pitcairn Island. Sixteen sailors from the Bounty stayed at Tahiti. At Pitcairn they took everything they could from the Bounty. After that Matthew Quintal set it on fire. The sexual imbalance (more men than women) and the slavery of the Tahitian men by the mutineers led to fighting and the deaths of most of the men. Fletcher Christian was killed in the fighting. He had a son with Maimiti, Thursday October Christian and two additional children.
Ichthyosaur
Ichthyosaurs are an extinct order of marine reptiles from the Mesozoic era.