The Ursula K Le Guin Prize 2024
Two days from now the Ursula K Le Guin Prize announces this year's winner. I was hoping that I would have read the whole shortlist by now but, if I'm being honest, I completely forgot about it. Still, I made a pretty decent go at it, completing six of the ten shortlisted books and DNFing two others (all the relevant posts about those books are here). The two books I didn't manage to get to were It Lasts Forever and Then It's Over and Those Beyond The Wall. Given that the former is a novella there's a chance I'll be able to read it ahead of the winner being announced, but I doubt I can fit Those Beyond The Wall in as well in the next 48 hours.
This is my first year reading the Le Guin Prize 1, and I was interested to see how these books match the stated aim of the prize to award books by "realists of a larger reality, who can imagine real grounds for hope and see alternatives to how we live now". And while I really enjoyed a lot of the books on the list, I think only two fell into that category for me - Nghi Vo's Mammoths At The Gates and Alissa Hattman's Sift. Both are beautiful books, and though I think Mammoths was my favourite of the two if I were asked to pick a book that best represents what the Prize is trying to award, I think I would pick Sift. (21/10 edit: Having now read It Lasts Forever And Then It's Over, that book gets my vote. Wow.)
I've read a lot of different awards shortlists this year - I've read the Booker, the Ignyte Awards, and the CWA Dagger, and I'm partway through reading the Goldsmiths Prize and considering looking at the Desmond Elliot Prize, too - and I think of all of them this has been the one with the most hits for me. I'll definitely be keeping this prize on my reading list for next year, and regardless of what wins on Monday I'll be making sure I finish reading the other books on this shortlist before the end of the year.
Because it's my first year being aware of it.↩