Author Ursula Le Guin received the Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters at this week’s National Book Awards and inspired the crowd by holding up freedom as an author’s best prize. “We will need writers who can remember freedom. Poets, visionaries—the realists of a larger reality.”

She said many things needed to change, and that change often begins in art, specifically the art of words. Writing books according to marketing formulas for corporate profit is a rotten idea, she said. We need artists.

Her speech was short, so you can easily watch the whole thing here.

In an interview, Le Guin said, “If you’re going to create a world out of whole cloth, that is to say, out of words, then you better get the words right.” You can read about her and her many books in The Guardian.