If you liked The Left Hand of Darkness

Le Guin is a hard act to follow because she was not really writing a trick about gender. She was writing about loyalty, weather, and the work of understanding someone who is not you.

Try Ted Chiang for first contact as language. A Memory Called Empire for an outsider in a literate empire. Kindred if you want time travel that hurts. Ancillary Justice if you want to stay in space and keep the questions.

Then come back to Earthsea. It is the other half of the same writer.