Date: Thu, 20 Nov 2014 20:43:01 -0500
From: mark <whitroth at 5-cent.us>
To: undisclosed-recipients:;
Subject: [WSFA] Ursula Le Guin cries freedom as she is honoured for contribution
 to literature
Reply-To: WSFA members <WSFAlist at KeithLynch.net>

Excerpt:
Ursula Le Guin has chosen to share her award for distinguished
contribution to American letters with her fellow science fiction and
fantasy authors, describing them as \342\200\234the writers who were excluded from
literature for so long ... who for the last 50 years watched the beautiful
rewards go to the so-called realists\342\200\235.

Le Guin, introduced by Neil Gaiman as an author who \342\200\234made me a better
writer and much more importantly, she made me a better person who wrote\342\200\235,
also used her speech on Wednesday to slam publishers, including her own,
and Amazon, and to urge the audience that books are \342\200\234not just
commodities\342\200\235.

\342\200\234The profit motive often is in conflict with the aims of art. We live in
capitalism,\342\200\235 she said. \342\200\234Its power seems inescapable. So did the divine
right of kings. Any human power can be resisted and changed by human
beings. Resistance and change often begin in art, and very often in our
art \342\200\223 the art of words.\342\200\235 Le Guin\342\200\231s speech was fully transcribed by Parker
Higgins, an activist at the Electronic Frontier Foundation in San
Francisco.
<...>
She said editorial departments cede control to sales departments, and: \342\200\234I
see my own publishers in a silly panic of ignorance and greed, charging
public libraries for an ebook six or seven times more than they charge
customers.\342\200\235
--- end excerpt ---

<http://www.theguardian.com/books/2014/nov/20/ursula-le-guin-award-freedom-honour-literature-profiteering-publishers>

      mark