The Ursula K. Le Guin Prize for Fiction, a $25,000 prize honoring a book-length work of imaginative fiction, today announces the shortlist for the 2024 prize.
The prize, created to continue Le Guin’s legacy, is given to a writer whose work reflects the concepts and ideas that were central to Ursula’s own work: hope, equity, and freedom; non-violence and alternatives to conflict; and a holistic view of humanity’s place in the natural world. It is also intended to offer its recipients a bit of freedom; as Theo Downes-Le Guin, Ursula’s son and literary executor, said in 2022, “We tried to design a prize that, even if it wasn’t life-changing in the context of every individual’s circumstances, is a significant enough amount to provide a positive disruption.”
In 2022, the inaugural prize went to Khadija Abdalla Bajaber for The House of Rust, and in 2023, Rebecca Campbell received the prize for Arboreality.
The prize shortlist is selected by the Ursula K. Le Guin Foundation, and the recipient is chosen by a panel of authors that this year includes Margaret Atwood, Omar El Akkad, Megan Giddings, Ken Liu, and Carmen Maria Machado.The recipient of the 2024 prize will be announced on Monday, October 21st, Ursula K. Le Guin’s birthday.
Here is the shortlist for the 2024 prize!
The Saint of Bright Doors by Vajra Chandrasekera
A young man rejects his chosen-one upbringing and discovers a much stranger life in a city full of doors and powers. Through layered storytelling that is both fantastical and familiar, Chandrasekera re-mythologizes the boundless ways that people shape and reshape history and the world.
The Skin and Its Girl by Sarah Cypher
At the grave of her beloved aunt, a queer, blue-skinned, Palestinian American woman ponders the next stage of her life and how it is informed by her family’s past. Cypher deftly explores the complexities of the stories we tell about ourselves, and the histories hidden in tales of magic and transformation.
It Lasts Forever and Then It’s Over by Anne de Marcken
In De Marcken’s compassionate novella, a nameless, undead protagonist finds new ways to navigate the landscapes shared by the living and the dead, the human and the inhuman. Her journey poignantly demonstrates new ways to grieve in and for a world we often take for granted.
Orbital by Samantha Harvey
Over the course of a single day, six astronauts orbit the earth, witnessing repeated sunrises, tending to their tasks and their bodies, and watching as a typhoon gathers far below. Meditative and precise, Orbital fosters an essential and global shift in perspective.
Sift by Alissa Hattman
Hattman’s elegiac novella follows two women as they cross a shifting, surreal, post-climate disaster landscape, seeking a place where they can grow food. Tender and rich with memories of the world as we know it, Sift is a meditation on isolation, change, and loss.
Those Beyond the Wall by Micaiah Johnson
The loyal mechanic to an emperor tells a story of revolution, community, and love in Johnson’s novel, which begins as a supernatural murder mystery before expanding to fearlessly consider what it might take for one world in the multiverse to achieve massive structural change.
The Library of Broken Worlds by Alaya Dawn Johnson
Johnson’s novel takes the form of the story a young woman tells to an AI god she intends to destroy. Encompassing several worlds, many gods, and peoples displaced and destroyed by war and colonialism, her tale is woven through with complex ideas about selfhood, history, and freedom.
The Siege of Burning Grass by Premee Mohamed
In a world long divided by conflict, a famed pacifist is coerced into a mission of war alongside a zealot who cares only for victory. Mohamed melds inventive worldbuilding with a nuanced consideration of power, violence, nationalism, and what it takes to achieve peace.
Some Desperate Glory by Emily Tesh
A space opera and a profound lesson in changing one’s mind, Some Desperate Glory follows a girl raised in a violent space cult who learns how to unravel the lies of her upbringing. Tesh shows that paradigm shifts are possible, however wrenchingly difficult they may be.
Mammoths at the Gates by Nghi Vo
Returning after a long absence, a story-collecting cleric finds that their abbey’s leader has died, and their distant family waits at the gates, demanding the body. Tracing the multitude of connections that exist in a single life, Vo illustrates the transformative power that grief has for an individual and for a community.
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