Pip Adam Wins 2026 Ursula K. Le Guin Prize for Fiction With Audition
New Zealand writer Pip Adam has won the 2026 Ursula K. Le Guin Prize for Fiction for her novel Audition, the Ursula K. Le Guin Literary Trust announced on 21 October 2026, the late author’s birthday. The prize carries US$25,000, and RNZ reported that Adam is the first New Zealand author to win it.
Audition was first published in New Zealand in 2023 by Te Herenga Waka University Press and was released in the United States in 2025 by Coffee House Press, according to RNZ.
Why Did the Judges Choose Audition?
The selection panel of Nicola Griffith, Mat Johnson, Fonda Lee, Darcie Little Badger and Peter Rock called Audition “an ambitious and original book about many things: the carceral state, dehumanization, memory and, perhaps above all, forgiveness as a way forward”, according to Locus.
The judges added that the book “gradually assumes the urgency of survival as three people whom society has deemed worthless find their way back to themselves, each other, and hope”, calling it “an astonishing and ultimately joyful work”.
- Prize: Ursula K. Le Guin Prize for Fiction 2026.
- Winner: Pip Adam, Audition (Coffee House Press in the US).
- Value: US$25,000.
- Announced: 21 October 2026.
- Created: 2022, in memory of Le Guin.
What Did Pip Adam Say?
In a recorded acceptance message, Adam thanked the judges “for meeting this strange book where it is”. She said: “I believe there is an incredible magic in the labour of trying to use words to describe the unspeakable, or to write that which does not exist yet.”
She also paid tribute to Le Guin, “not just for showing me a way to read and to write, but for showing me how to live as a writer and a human being”. Adam said she was recording from a public library in Taranaki, and used the moment to highlight funding pressures on library services, RNZ reported.
Who Is Pip Adam?
Adam is an established figure in New Zealand fiction. She won the fiction prize at the 2018 Ockham New Zealand Book Awards for The New Animals, and in 2025 received the Creative New Zealand Michael King Writer’s Fellowship, worth NZ$100,000, according to RNZ.
Which Other Books Were Shortlisted?
Locus listed the other eight shortlisted titles as:
- Sunward by William Alexander (Saga)
- Call and Response by Christopher Caldwell (Neon Hemlock)
- Midnight Timetable by Bora Chung, translated by Anton Hur (Algonquin)
- The Works of Vermin by Hiron Ennes (Tor)
- Notes from a Regicide by Isaac Fellman (Tor)
- Mad Sisters of Esi by Tashan Mehta (DAW)
- One Message Remains by Premee Mohamed (Psychopomp)
- Slow Gods by Claire North (Orbit)
What Is the Ursula K. Le Guin Prize?
Created in 2022, the prize is awarded for a single work of imaginative fiction, going “to the author of a book that reflects the concepts and ideas that were central to Ursula’s own work”, in the trust’s words as quoted by Locus. Le Guin (1929–2018) was the American author of The Left Hand of Darkness and the Earthsea series.
Literary prizes are also at the centre of debates about technology and authorship; see our reports on the Prix Pascal AI literary prize and authors suing Meta over AI training.
Featured image: shelves in the Constant Reader bookshop, Crows Nest, Sydney (May 2026), by Nick-D / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0. Illustrative file photo.
Sources
- Locus — Adam Wins Le Guin Prize (22 October 2026).
- RNZ — Kiwi writer wins major international fiction prize (23 October 2026).
