Yvette Lisa Ndlovu’s novel Drinking from Graveyard Wells is on the shortlist for the Ursula K. Le Guin Prize for Fiction 2023 announced on Tuesday, July 11, 2023.
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 first handed out in 2022. 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 was Khadija Abdalla Bajaber.
The jury for this year comprises academic and multiple award-winning author William Alexander, academic and award-winning author Alexander Chee, novelist Karen Joy Fowler, award-winning author Tochi Onyebuchi, and award-winning author Shruti Swamy. They announced the shortlist on Tuesday with Drinking from Graveyard Wells by Zimbabwean Yvette Lisa Ndlovu making the cut. The description of the book is thus;
Drinking from Graveyard Wells by Yvette Lisa Ndlovu (University Press of Kentucky)
In her first story collection, Ndlovu melds folklore, myth, realism, and SFF elements into a cohesive whole, telling stories that cast new light on longstanding issues, from gentrification to assimilation, stolen ideas to stolen memories. Complex histories inform her fantastical futures (and present), as her characters struggle to be seen, and to be free.
Responding to the listing Ndlovu said, “What an honor! Congrats to all the amazing authors on this shortlist!💙💙”
If the previous year’s trajectory is to be followed, we can expect a winner to be announced in October.
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