I just wanted to share this speech by Ursula K. LeGuin (1929 - 2018). It expresses a point of view that inspires hope in literature as a way to imagine alternative worlds to the one we live in today. Art has the power of not having to submit to anyone’s will other than its creator. And literature will lose this advantage that sets it apart from the rest of entertainment if it’s used merely as a product to make money.
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.