Bhanu Kapil

Una McCormack

David Naimon

Marilyn Strathern

Nisha Ramayya

Canisia Lubrin

Federico Campagna

Daniel Heath Justice

Theo Downes-Le Guin

Shoshone Collective

Standard Deviation

When Ursula K. Le Guin started writing a new story, she would begin by drawing a map. The Word for World presents a selection of these images by the celebrated author, many of which have never been published before, to consider how her imaginary worlds enable us to re-envision our own. 

Le Guin’s maps offer journeys of consciousness beyond conventional cartography, from the Rorschach-like archipelagos of Earthsea to the talismanic maps of Always Coming Home. Rather than remaining within known terrain, they open up paradigms of knowledge, exemplified by the map’s edges and how a map is read, made and re-made, together. The Word for World brings her maps together with poems, stories, interviews, recipes and essays by contributors from a variety of perspectives to enquire into the relationship between worlds and how they are represented and imagined.

The Maps of Ursula K Le Guin

The Word for World

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