The Birthday of the World and Other Stories is a collection of short fiction by American writer Ursula K. Le Guin, first published in March, 2002, by HarperCollins. All of the stories, except "Paradises Lost", were previously published individually elsewhere. The story which lends its name to the title of the collection was the most recent publication, in 2000. Only these two stories are not set on planets of the Ekumen. The collection was also published in London by Gollancz, an imprint of the Orion Group, in 2003. A softcover edition was published by Perennial that year.