Climbing Lightly Through Forests

Ursula K. Le Guin, celebrated for her speculative fiction, was also a prolific poet. Although poetry framed Le Guin’s life, her poetic oeuvre never garnered the same acclaim as her fiction. Distinct from the cosmic worldbuilding of her science fiction and fantasy, Le Guin’s poems were “smaller scale, more intimate, more fragile.”
As a tribute anthology, Climbing Lightly Through Forests hosts multiple conversations: poets respond to Ursula K. Le Guin, her work, or their own reactions to Le Guin or her work; editors Lemberg and Bradley put the poets in conversation with each other and with readers. Poets from around the world (including Greece, Spain, Trinidad and Tobago, Chile, the UK, Australia, Canada, and the United States) contribute perspectives that both honor and challenge Le Guin’s legacy. In addition, Lemberg, a Le Guin Feminist Science Fiction Fellow, provides a retrospective essay analyzing Le Guin’s nine full-length poetry collections.

R.B. Lemberg's work has appeared in Uncanny Magazine, Lightspeed's Queers Destroy Science Fiction, Strange Horizons, Beneath Ceaseless Skies, and many other venues. Their work has been nominated for the Nebula Award, appeared on the Tiptree Longlist, was longlisted for the Hugo award, has placed in the Rhysling award, won and placed in the Strange Horizons Readers’ Poll, and was translated into Spanish and Chinese. R.B.'s debut poetry collection, Marginalia to Stone Bird (Aqueduct, 2016), was shortlisted for the Crawford and Elgin awards. For a full bibliography, please see http://roselemberg.net.

Lisa M. Bradley’s speculative fiction and poetry explore boundaries and liminal spaces: real, imagined, and metaphorical. Her work has appeared in Sunvault: Stories of Solarpunk and Eco-Speculation, The Moment of Change: An Anthology of Feminist Speculative Poetry, and her first collection, The Haunted Girl. Online, her work has been published by Uncanny, Strange Horizons, and Fireside Magazine. In her debut novel, Exile, a determined antiheroine schemes to escape her quarantined bordertown. You can find her website at https://lisambradley.com/.