Ursula LeGuin is profiled at The Guardian where she talks about Harry Potter, the scifi Channel adaptation of Earthsea, Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, gender and race in her fiction and on writing fantasy in general:

"Writing fantasy isn't writing for children, but it erases the distinctions; it's inherently a crossover genre," she says. Much of fantasy writing, she adds, is "about power - just look at Tolkien. It's a means to examine what it does to the person who has it, and to others." A believer, with Shelley, that "the great instrument of moral good is the imagination", she says: "If you cannot or will not imagine the results of your actions, there's no way you can act morally or responsibly. Little kids can't do it; babies are morally monsters - completely greedy. Their imagination has to be trained into foresight and empathy." No easy task. As she once wrote in exasperation, "Sure, it's simple, writing for kids. Just as simple as bringing them up."

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Posted by John DeNardo at Thursday December 22, 2005 at 12:35 PM
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