The incomparable local sci-fi/fantasy writer Ursula K. Le Guin is at Powell's tonight, reading from a new volume that collects both her short story "The Wild Girls" and her 2008 Harper's essay "Staying Awake While We Read," as well as an original essay on modesty, and an interview conducted by sci-fi writer Terry Bisson.

I write about the collection in some detail right over here, but the money quote comes from Le Guin herself, in the Q&A.

"The only means I have to stop ignorant snobs from behaving toward genre fiction with snobbish ignorance is to not reinforce their ignorance and snobbery by lying and saying that when I write sci-fi it isn't sci-fi, but to tell them more or less patiently for 40 or 50 years that they are wrong to exclude sci-fi and fantasy from literature, and proving my argument by writing well."

How badass is that?

(Also, somebody ask her about Google, and report back.)