Pip Adam’s Audition wins the 2026 Ursula K. Le Guin Prize

The Coffee House Press novel receives the foundation’s annual $25,000 fiction award.

Pip Adam has won the 2026 Ursula K. Le Guin Prize for Fiction for Audition. The foundation confirmed the result on October 21, Le Guin’s birthday, and published the announcement and Adam’s acceptance speech on its official prize page. The annual award gives $25,000 to the writer of one work of imaginative fiction.

Audition, published by Coffee House Press, was selected from nine shortlisted books following a public nomination process. This year’s selectors were Nicola Griffith, Mat Johnson, Fonda Lee, Darcie Little Badger and Peter Rock. The panel highlighted the novel’s treatment of imprisonment, dehumanisation, memory and

forgiveness. Its description follows three people moving from incarceration into exile, using speculative changes to bodies and identity to consider violence and the possibility of healing. For readers following the shortlist, this is the final award result rather than another nomination announcement. The foundation’s

page keeps the other eight shortlisted books alongside the winner, providing a wider reading route through this year’s recognised imaginative fiction. Official source. Image credit: Ursula K. Le Guin Foundation; Pip Adam photograph by Ralph Brown; Audition cover via Coffee House Press.

Open the interactive version on https://mythscribe.cloud/blog/pip-adam-audition-le-guin-prize-winner-october-2026.