The Strange Friendships of Ursula K. Le Guin's "The Left Hand of Darkness"

I never met Ursula K. Le Guin, who died on January 22, 2018, at the age of eighty-eight, in Portland, Oregon, her home for many years. And yet we became good friends during the last two months of her life, entirely by way of e-mail. I inaugurated the correspondence on November 21, 2017, and she replied on November 24th. One of the things I like least about being very old is the unreliability of my energy. Working at poetry or a story is, always has been, the job I want to be doing, the work that keeps me steady and content.