Here is the shortlist for the ($25,000!) Ursula K. Le Guin Prize.
The Ursula K. Le Guin Literary Trust has announced the shortlist for the second annual Ursula K. Le Guin Prize for Fiction.
The Ursula K. Le Guin Prize for Fiction is an annual $25,000 cash prize given to a writer for a single work of imaginative fiction. The award is intended to recognize those writers Le Guin spoke of in her 2014 National Book Awards speech—”realists of a larger reality, who can imagine real grounds for hope and see alternatives to how we live now.”
As reported by Leah Schnelbach in Electric Literature earlier today:
The Prize was created to continue Le Guin’s legacy as an author who defied genre, interrogated capitalism, celebrated hope and possibility in her writing, and who encouraged artists to find intellectual and artistic freedom in their work. Theo Downes-Le Guin, the author’s son and literary executor, founded the Prize to honor his mother’s work, to shine a light on newer authors, and to offer money that will provide at least a measure of independence to writers of imaginative fiction.
The recipient of this year’s prize will be chosen by authors William Alexander, Alexander Chee, Karen Joy Fowler, Tochi Onyebuchi, and Shruti Swamy from nine nominees selected by the Trust.
Here’s the full list of nominees:
Christine M. Andrews, Wolfish (Little, Brown)
Rebecca Campbell, Arboreality (Stelliform)
Nicola Griffith, Spear (Tordotcom)
Yuri Herrera, Ten Planets (Graywolf)
Simon Jimenez, The Spear Cuts Through Water (Del Rey)
Zain Khalid, Brother Alive (Grove)
Akil Kumarasamy, Meet Us by the Roaring Sea (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)
R. B. Lemberg, Geometrics of Belonging (Fairwood Press)
Yvette Lisa Ndlovu, Drinking From Graveyard Wells (University Press of Kentucky)
