In The Carrier Bag Theory of Fiction, visionary author Ursula K. Le Guin retells the story of human origin by redefining technology as a cultural carrier bag rather than a weapon of domination. Hacking the linear, progressive mode of the Techno-Heroic, the Carrier Bag Theory of human evolution proposes: 'before the tool that forces energy outward, we made the tool that brings energy home.' Prior to the preeminence of sticks, swords and the Hero's long, hard, killing tools, our ancestors' greatest invention was the container: the basket of wild oats, the medicine bundle, the net made of your own hair, the home, the shrine, the place that contains whatever is sacred. The recipient, the holder, the story. The bag of stars. This influential essay opens a portal to terra ignota: unknown lands where the possibilities of human experience and knowledge can be discovered anew. With a new introduction by Donna Haraway, the eminent cyberfeminist, author of the revolutionary A Cyborg Manifesto and most recently, Staying with the Trouble and Manifestly Haraway. With images by Lee Bul, a leading South Korean feminist artist who had a retrospective at London's Hayward Gallery in 2018.

The celebrated author offers her thoughts on a broad range of subjects, including literary criticism, the state of science fiction writing today, and government and governmental policies.

“Ursula Le Guin at her best . . . This is an important collection of eloquent, elegant pieces by one of our most acclaimed contemporary writers.” —Elizabeth Hand, The Washington Post Book World “I have decided that the trouble with print is, it never changes its mind,” writes Ursula K. Le Guin in her introduction to Dancing at the Edge of the World. But she has, and here is the record of that change in the decade since the publication of her last nonfiction collection, The Language of the Night. And what a mind—strong, supple, disciplined, playful, ranging over the whole field of its concerns, from modern literature to menopause, from utopian thought to rodeos, with an eloquence, wit, and precision that makes for exhilarating reading. “If you are tired of being able to predict what a writer will say next, if you are bored stiff with minimalism, if you want excess and risk and intelligence and pure orneriness, try Le Guin.” —Mary Mackey, San Francisco Chronicle

Sad Sack' is a book of collected writing by Sophia Al-Maria, taking feminist inspiration from Ursula K. Le Guin?s 1986 essay 'The Carrier Bag Theory of Fiction'; opposing "the linear, progressive, Time?s-(killing)-arrow mode of the Techno-Heroic." Encompassing more than a decade of work, 'Sad Sack' tracks Al-Maria?s speculative journey as a writer, from the first seed of her "premature" memoir, through the coining and subsequent critique of "Gulf Futurism", towards experiments in gathering, containing, welling up and sucking dry.0Sophia Al-Maria was Whitechapel Gallery?s Writer in Residence 2018 ? her exhibition ?BCE? (Whitechapel Gallery, January ? April 2019), draws on a year of performances and readings, culminating in two short creation myth films: one from the ancient past, originating with the Wayuu tribe in northern Colombia; the other from the distant future, made with Victoria Sin.0.

Living on a damaged planet challenges who we are and where we live. This timely anthology calls on twenty eminent humanists and scientists to revitalize curiosity, observation, and transdisciplinary conversation about life on earth. As human-induced environmental change threatens multispecies livability, Arts of Living on a Damaged Planet puts forward a bold proposal: entangled histories, situated narratives, and thick descriptions offer urgent “arts of living.” Included are essays by scholars in anthropology, ecology, science studies, art, literature, and bioinformatics who posit critical and creative tools for collaborative survival in a more-than-human Anthropocene. The essays are organized around two key figures that also serve as the publication’s two openings: Ghosts, or landscapes haunted by the violences of modernity; and Monsters, or interspecies and intraspecies sociality. Ghosts and Monsters are tentacular, windy, and arboreal arts that invite readers to encounter ants, lichen, rocks, electrons, flying foxes, salmon, chestnut trees, mud volcanoes, border zones, graves, radioactive waste—in short, the wonders and terrors of an unintended epoch. Contributors: Karen Barad, U of California, Santa Cruz; Kate Brown, U of Maryland, Baltimore; Carla Freccero, U of California, Santa Cruz; Peter Funch, Aarhus U; Scott F. Gilbert, Swarthmore College; Deborah M. Gordon, Stanford U; Donna J. Haraway, U of California, Santa Cruz; Andreas Hejnol, U of Bergen, Norway; Ursula K. Le Guin; Marianne Elisabeth Lien, U of Oslo; Andrew Mathews, U of California, Santa Cruz; Margaret McFall-Ngai, U of Hawaii, Manoa; Ingrid M. Parker, U of California, Santa Cruz; Mary Louise Pratt, NYU; Anne Pringle, U of Wisconsin, Madison; Deborah Bird Rose, U of New South Wales, Sydney; Dorion Sagan; Lesley Stern, U of California, San Diego; Jens-Christian Svenning, Aarhus U.

"Ursula K. Le Guin, a student of the Tao Te Ching for more than fifty years, offers her own thoughtful rendering of the Taoist scripture. She has consulted the literal translations and worked with the scholar J. P. Seaton to develop a version that lets the ancient text speak in a fresh way to modern people, while remaining faithful to the original Chinese. This rendition reveals the Tao Te Ching's immediate relevance and power, its depth and refreshing humor, illustrating better than ever before why it has been so loved for more than 2,500 years. Included are Le Guin's own personal commentary and notes along with two audio CDs of the text read by the author, with original music composed and performed by Todd Barton."--Publisher's website.

A revised and updated guide to the essentials of a writer's craft, presented by a brilliant practitioner of the art