The shortlist for the 2023 Ursula K. Le Guin Prize, given annually to “a writer for a single work of imaginative fiction,” has been revealed, with Yuri Herrera, Zain Khalid, and Nicola Griffith among the authors in contention for the award.
Ten Planets, written by Herrera and translated by Lisa Dillman, was shortlisted for the prize, along with Khalid’s Brother Alive, which was the winner of the New York Public Library’s Young Lions Fiction Award and a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle’s John Leonard Prize.
Griffith made the shortlist for Spear; the novel won Los Angeles Times’ Ray Bradbury Prize and was a finalist for the Nebula Award for best novel. Rebecca Campbell was named a finalist for Arboreality, alongside Christiane M. Andrews for Wolfishand Yvette Lisa Ndlovu for Drinking from Graveyard Wells.
Rounding out the shortlist were Simon Jimenez for The Spear Cuts Through Water, Akil Kumarasamy for Meet Us By the Roaring Sea, and R.B. Lemberg for Geometries of Belonging.
The Ursula K. Le Guin Prize, named after the science fiction and fantasy author who died in 2018, was first awarded last year, to Khadija Abdalla Bajaber for The House of Rust. The winner of this year’s award, which comes with a cash prize of $25,000, will be announced later this year.
Michael Schaub, a journalist and regular contributor to NPR, lives near Austin, Texas.
