Ursula K. Le Guin Prize for Fiction 2025 shortlist announced

Andrea Hairston and Nalo Hopkinson are on the Ursula K. Le Guin Prize for Fiction 2025 shortlist, announced on Wednesday, June 18, 2025.

Ursula Kroeber Le Guin (1929-2018) was a US-American author with a large body of work in prose, poetry, and nonfiction as well as in translation that earned her numerous awards. The Ursula K. Le Guin Prize for Fiction, worth $25,000, is a prize given to a writer for a single work of imaginative fiction. It is intended to recognize writers whose work sees a larger reality, who can imagine real grounds for hope, and see alternatives to how we live now. The first winner of the award in 2022 was Khadija Abdalla Bajaber, while Yvette Lisa Ndlovu was shortlisted in 2023.

The 2025 jury comprises short story writer and novelist Matt Bell, Indian writer and editor Indra Das, award-winning short story writer and editor Kelly Link, short story writer and novelist Sequoia Nagamatsu, and award-winning speculative fiction writer Rebecca Roanhorse. They announced the shortlist for the year, which features the following writers of African descent;

• Blackheart Man, Nalo Hopkinson – On the island nation of Chynchin, griot-in-training Veycosi gets himself into considerable trouble while trying to help head off a potential invasion—and to figure out what’s happened to the town’s children. Layered with history, culture, and folklore, Hopkinson’s novel is a lush, adventurous feast of possibility and wit.
• Archangels of Funk, Andrea Hairston – The Next World Festival must—and will—go on in Archangels of Funk, which depicts an art- and community-filled vision of how we might live in a semi-apocalyptic future. Warm, hopeful, funky, and wise, Hairston’s novel has room for elders, dogs, teens, children, spirits, musicians, performers, writers, coders, and everyone else, on stage or off.

The Ursula K. Le Guin Prize for Fiction 2025 recipient will be announced on October 21st—Ursula’s birthday.