Le Guin is phenomenal. Her acceptance speech at the 65th National Book Awards makes me tear up to this day.

"Hard times are coming, when we’ll be wanting the voices of writers who can see alternatives to how we live now, can see through our fear-stricken society and its obsessive technologies to other ways of being, and even imagine real grounds for hope. We’ll need writers who can remember freedom — poets, visionaries — realists of a larger reality."

Edit: Here's the full speech if anyone is interested in listening to it. It's only six minutes and well-worth it.