title: Unlocking the Air and Other Stories
text: # Unlocking the Air and Other Stories
  
  Unlocking the Air and Other Stories is a 1996 collection of short stories by Ursula K. Le Guin. Like Searoad and Orsinian Tales, most of the included stories are neither science fiction nor fantasy. It was a finalist for the 1997 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction.
  
  ## Contents
  
  * "Half Past Four" (1987, The New Yorker)
  * "The Professor's Houses" (1982, The New Yorker)
  * "Ruby on the 67"
  * "Limberlost" (1989, Michigan Quarterly Review)
  * "The Creatures on My Mind" (1990, Harper's)
  * "Standing Ground" (1992, Ms.)
  * "The Spoons in the Basement" (1982, The New Yorker)
  * "Sunday in Summer in Seatown" (1995, Thirteenth Moon)
  * "In the Drought" (1993, Xanadu II)
  * "Ether, OR" (1995, Asimov's Science Fiction)
  * "Unlocking the Air" (1990, Playboy)
  * "A Child Bride" (1987, Terry's Universe, as "Kore 87")
  * "Climbing to the Moon" (1992, American Short Fiction)
  * "Daddy's Big Girl" (1987, Omni)
  * "Findings" (1992, Ox Head Press chapbook)
  * "Olders" (1995, Omni)
  * "The Wise Woman" (1995, The Sound of Writing (broadcast))
  * "The Poacher" (1992, Xanadu)
  