Neil Gaiman presents lifetime achievement award to Ursula K. Le Guin at 2014 National Book Awards

For more than forty years, Le Guin has defied conventions of narrative, language, character, and genre, as well as transcended the boundaries between fantasy and realism, to forge new paths for literary fiction. Among the nation’s most revered writers of science fiction and fantasy, Le Guin’s fully imagined worlds challenge readers to consider profound philosophical and existential questions about gender, race, the environment, and society. Her boldly experimental and critically acclaimed novels, short stories, and children’s books, written in elegant prose, are popular with millions of readers around the world.

In recognition of her transformative impact on American literature, Ursula K. Le Guin is the 2014 recipient of the Foundation’s Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters. She is the Foundation’s twenty-seventh award recipient.
 

Kurt Vonnegut on how to write a short story

Advice from Vonnegut, because today everything is storytelling. 

Grace Hopper: The Queen of Code

The FiveThirtyEight Signals Series: 

You probably don’t know the name Grace Hopper, but you should.

As a rear admiral in the U.S. Navy, Hopper worked on the first computer, the Harvard Mark 1. And she headed the team that created the first compiler, which led to the creation of COBOL, a programming language that by the year 2000 accounted for 70 percent of all actively used code. Passing away in 1992, she left behind an inimitable legacy as a brilliant programmer and pioneering woman in male-dominated fields. 

Hopper’s story is told in “The Queen of Code,” directed by Gillian Jacobs (of “Community” fame). It’s the latest film in FiveThirtyEight’s “Signals” series.

Behind The Next Step

From AdWeek:

One of the great ads of the past decade was the 2009 Johnnie Walker spot, filmed in a single take, with the brilliant Robert Carlyle telling the brand's history while strolling in the Scottish Highlands. Now, the whiskey brand and BBH have crafted another captivating single-take spot—a year-end meditation that looks forward, rather than backward, by showing a man walking through his dreamlike vision of 2015.

They did some 50 takes in three days.

Neil Gaiman reads Jabberwocky

Worldbuilders let people who donated money to them vote on what I would read if they hit $600,000. They did reach that goal, and they voted. It was between Goodnight Moon, Fox in Socks, Where the Wild Things Are and Jabberwocky. Jabberwocky won. So I got up this morning and headed, sleep-bleary, out into the woods to record myself reciting it... You can donate to Worldbuilders at worldbuilders.org. And you should.