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 Welcome to The Carrier Bag, a podcast about the life, work, and influence of Ursula K. Le Guin, hosted by Stentor Danielson. Stay tuned for our first episode!

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Rocannon's World, Part IV

https://spotifyanchor-web.app.link/e/AXH8FtkJaHb Today we'll be looking at chapters seven, eight, and nine and the epilogue of Le Guin's first published novel, Rocannon's World , from 1966. Last time, we left Rocannon and his companions in the city of the Winged Ones, a previously unknown humanoid species that turns out to eat people. Raho has been killed. Rocannon runs away from the building where he saw them feeding, trying to figure out how he will rescue his friends. He runs into a small fuzzy creature that turns out to be capable of speech, which calls itself a Kiemhrir. The Kiemhrir help Rocannon find his remaining companions, summon their windsteeds, and escape from the city. The group retrieves their gear from their campsite and resumes their trek southward. Kyo reveals that the Fiia have stories about the Kiemhrir, but not the Winged Ones. He describes his own race as "half-people" who remember the good and forget the bad. Crossing the mountains, the grou...
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Rocannon's World, part II

    Today we'll be looking at chapters three and four of Le Guin's first published novel, Rocannon's World , from 1966. Chapter three opens with Rocannon's preparations for departure. Lady Haldre, Semley's daughter and now ruler of the realm of Hallan, gives him five companions -- Mogien and four Olgyior, named Yahan, Raho, Iot, and Bien, with windsteeds for all of them. Kyo the Fiia also comes along. Haldre also bestows on Rocannon the necklace which Semley brought back many years ago, which he hides underneath his clothing. The group flies southward, after several days reaching the town of Tolen where they discover that the ruling Angyar family has been kidnapped and their castle stands empty next to the village of Olgyior they had ruled over. Rocannon's company flies on to Plenot, stronghold of the warlord who is responsible for Tolen's devastation. They succeed in defeating the lord of Plenot and securing the release of prisoners and boats that had been ...
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Folk Song from the Montayna Province, and An die Musik

 Welcome to the Carrier Bag, a podcast about the life, work, and influence of Ursula K. Le Guin. I'm your host, Stentor Danielson (they/them). In this episode I'll be talking about Le Guin's first two published works. "Folk Song from the Montayna Province" is a short poem published in the Fall 1959 issue of the Prairie Poet , and "An die Musik" is a short story published in 1961 in the Western Humanities Review . She was not paid for either of them, so they predate her career as a professional writer. They were both republished in the Library of America collection The Complete Orsinia , which is the easiest place to find them today. Both of these works are set in the first major fictional world that Le Guin created, the central European country of Orsinia. I'll have a lot more to say about Orsinia when we get to the publication of her story collection Orsinian Tales and her novel Malafrena . For now, we can say that Orsinia is a quasi-realist setti...
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