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70 free Ursula K. Le Guin trivia questions with answers — literature quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
This Ursula K. Le Guin trivia quiz spans the whole of her sixty-year career: the Berkeley childhood among anthropologists, the five rejected Orsinia novels, the Ace Double debut Rocannon's World, and the two masterpieces that arrived back to back in 1968 and 1969, A Wizard of Earthsea and The Left Hand of Darkness. From there it moves through The Lathe of Heaven, The Word for World Is Forest, The Dispossessed, 'The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas', Always Coming Home, Tehanu, The Other Wind, Lavinia and the Annals of the Western Shore. Expect questions on Ged, Tenar, Ogion and Roke; on Genly Ai, Estraven, kemmer and shifgrethor; on Shevek, Anarres and the ansible; on George Orr's reality-bending dreams; and on the awards, feuds, translations and adaptations, from the 1980 PBS Lathe of Heaven that Le Guin actually liked to the Ghibli Earthsea film that disappointed her. Some questions suit anyone who has read one Earthsea book; others are for readers who know why she refused a Nebula in 1977. Every answer has been checked against primary sources, chiefly the Wikipedia articles on Le Guin and each work, and each explanation adds one further detail. Play, see your score, and share it with the readers in your life.
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Q 01In which California city was Ursula Kroeber born in 1929?
Berkeley
Her father Alfred Kroeber was an anthropologist at the University of California there, and the family summered in Napa Valley.
Q 02Le Guin's mother Theodora Kroeber wrote a 1961 biography of which man, the last known Yahi?
Ishi
Elements of his story have been traced in Planet of Exile, City of Illusions and The Word for World Is Forest.
Q 03Which famous physicist, a visitor to the Kroeber home, was Le Guin's model for Shevek in The Dispossessed?
Robert Oppenheimer
Shevek is a physicist from the anarchist moon Anarres who travels to the wealthy planet Urras.
Q 04How old was Le Guin when she submitted her first short story to Astounding Science Fiction?
11
It was rejected, and she did not submit anything else for another ten years.
Q 05Le Guin took her bachelor's degree in Renaissance French and Italian literature from which college?
Radcliffe
She went on to a master's in French at Columbia and a Fulbright to France, where she met her husband.
Q 06Aboard which ocean liner did Ursula meet historian Charles Le Guin in 1953?
Queen Mary
They married in Paris that December, which she later said meant 'the end of the doctorate'.
Q 07In which city did the Le Guins settle in 1959 and live for the rest of their lives?
Portland, Oregon
Charles took a history job at Portland State University; their son Theodore was born there in 1964.
Q 08Le Guin's earliest fiction, including five rejected novels, was set in which invented European country?
Orsinia
Her first published poem and first published story were both Orsinian; the realistic Orsinian Tales finally appeared in 1976.
Q 09What was Le Guin's first professionally published story, which appeared in Fantastic in 1962?
April in Paris
Seven more stories followed in Fantastic and Amazing Stories, including the ones that introduced Earthsea and the Hainish universe.
Q 10Which publisher released Le Guin's debut novel Rocannon's World in 1966?
Ace Books
It came out as half of an 'Ace Double', bound back-to-back with Avram Davidson's The Kar-Chee Reign.
Q 11Which magazine ran Le Guin's 'Nine Lives' in 1968 as 'U. K. Le Guin' after asking to hide her first name?
Playboy
She later called it the only time she experienced prejudice as a woman writer from an editor, and the story was reprinted under her full name.
Q 12Which small press published A Wizard of Earthsea in 1968?
Parnassus
Le Guin had not planned to write for young adults, but the editor saw a market with great potential.
Q 13On which island of Earthsea is Ged born?
Gont
He is nicknamed Sparrowhawk as a boy; his true name is revealed by the mage Ogion.
What is Ged's childhood name before Ogion reveals his true name?
Q 21What recognition did The Tombs of Atuan receive in 1972?
Newbery Honor Book
It had first appeared in the Winter 1970 issue of Worlds of Fantasy magazine before Atheneum published it as a book.
Q 22Which young prince accompanies Ged in The Farthest Shore?
Arren
His true name is Lebannen, and he ends the book as the king who reunites the fractious islands.
Q 23What is the name of Ged's boat in the Earthsea books?
Lookfar
In The Farthest Shore he sails it south to Hort Town and on to the far Reaches with Arren.
Which dark mage, obsessed with escaping death, is the antagonist of The Farthest Shore?
Duny
Names carry real power in Earthsea, and a wizard's true name is guarded closely.
Q 15Which fellow student's taunts provoke Ged into the duel that looses the shadow?
Jasper
Ged's pride is the flaw the whole book turns on; the shadow is often read as a Jungian Shadow archetype.
Q 16What kind of small animal is Hoeg, the pet Ged keeps at Roke and later loses to the shadow?
An otak
The otak is an invented Earthsea creature; its loss is one of Ged's several bitter lessons about the cost of power.
Q 17Which prize did A Wizard of Earthsea win in 1969?
Boston Globe–Horn Book Award
It was also one of the last recipients of the Lewis Carroll Shelf Award in 1979.
Q 18Which author called A Wizard of Earthsea one of the 'wellsprings' of fantasy literature?
Margaret Atwood
Modern writers credit the book with the idea of a wizard school long before Hogwarts.
Q 19Tenar, heroine of The Tombs of Atuan, is raised as high priestess to which unseen deities?
The Nameless Ones
Ged comes to the Tombs to steal half of the Ring of Erreth-Akbe, and Tenar traps him in the labyrinth.
Q 20The broken Ring of Erreth-Akbe in The Tombs of Atuan is inscribed with how many runes?
Nine
The breaking caused the Bond-Rune, needed for peace in Earthsea, to be forgotten.
Cob
Ged spends all his wizardly power sealing the breach Cob made between the living and the dead.
Q 25The Farthest Shore won which prize in 1973?
National Book Award for Children's Books
Its exploration of death drew special praise, and Studio Ghibli later built its Earthsea film mostly on this book.
Q 26Tehanu, published in 1990, was initially given what subtitle?
The Last Book of Earthsea
Two more Earthsea books followed anyway in 2001: Tales from Earthsea and The Other Wind.
Q 27In Tehanu, Ged arrives on Gont near death on the back of which dragon?
Kalessin
He has spent all his power sealing the gap between the worlds of the living and the dead.
Q 28What does the name Therru, given to the burned child Tenar adopts in Tehanu, mean?
Flame
The novel won the 1990 Nebula for Best Novel and shifted Earthsea toward a feminist reading of an aging hero and heroine.
Q 29The Other Wind, the last Earthsea book, took which prize in 2002?
World Fantasy Award for Best Novel
Its protagonist Alder is a humble mender tormented by dreams of the wall of stones between the living and the dead.
Q 30In The Left Hand of Darkness, envoy Genly Ai is sent to which ice-covered planet?
Gethen
Its own people call it Gethen; the Ekumen calls it Winter. Ai's mission is to bring it into the Ekumen.