Using Awards Lists As a RA Tool: The Ursula K. Le Guin Prize Edition

This is part of my ongoing series on using Awards Lists as a RA tool. Click here for all posts in the series in reverse chronological order. Click here for the first post which outlines the details how to use awards lists as a RA tool.  

This week 10 authors were named to the shortlist for the Ursula K. Le Guin Prize. Never heard of it? We will discuss below why this makes it such a great resource, but first, here is the information from the prize's landing page:

The Ursula K. Le Guin Prize for Fiction is an annual $25,000 cash prize given to a writer for a single work of imaginative fiction. This award is intended to recognize those writers Ursula spoke of in her 2014 National Book Awards speech—realists of a larger reality, who can imagine real grounds for hope and see alternatives to how we live now. Read about the first Ursula K. Le Guin Prize for Fiction, awarded in 2022.

This year, ten shortlisted books were chosen by the Ursula K. Le Guin Foundation following a public nomination process.

The recipient of this year’s prize will be chosen by a selection panel of authors: Margaret Atwood, Omar El Akkad, Megan Giddings, Ken Liu, and Carmen Maria Machado. The recipient of the 2024 Ursula K. Le Guin Prize for Fiction will be announced on October 21st—Ursula’s birthday. Check back closer to that date for more details.

Many thanks to everyone who nominated books, and to Electric Literature for announcing the shortlist!

First, I want to address the comment I made above about the fact that you might be less familiar with this prize makes it an even better resource. Knowing about prize and award lists that most of our patrons are also aware of is necessary for us to do our jobs. Our patrons will expect that we have heard of those honors and expect we are ready to help them find books that are nominated for or have been nominated for said award. It's the lowest hanging fruit for us to look like we are prepared to help them.

However, where we show our worth to our patrons the best is by pointing out books and authors they would NOT have found without our help. If you hand them James Patterson, Colleen Hoover, or the most recent National Book Award winner you may give them a book they will enjoy but you won't show them anything they didn't know. We all work hard to be good at our jobs. We take matching books with the best book for them at that moment very seriously. They have no idea how hard we work at it. And why is that? because we don't SHOW them the effort.

In general we are terrible at communicating what it actually takes to craft a collection, but we are even worse at giving ourselves credit for that work. 

The Usual K. Le Guin Prize is a great example of showcasing critically acclaimed authors to our patrons, writers they might really enjoy, if only they knew about them.

And for us, this is a great chance to add newer voices to our collections. One of my favorite newer voices in speculative fiction, Premee Mohamed, is on this list but some of the others, I was not aware of.

Second, let's talk about the category of writers for this award. It is a, "prize given to a writer for a single work of imaginative fiction." I love that word "imaginative." It leaves the door open to the reader and, in this case, judge to decide what that means. In this case, it is almost always interpreted as speculative in some way. But the breadth this natural language term allows is refreshing. These are authors whose work would be very hard to fit into a genre box, meaning they might not get nominated for genre specific awards, and yet, their work is great and worthy of a larger audience. 

I also love the term "imaginative fiction" because it would make an excellent conversation starter to display idea. (Go here for more on that by me) Put up a display of these authors, the judges, and the backlist by the authors and judges, and then ask people (at the display, with bookmarks at the service desks or in every book on the hold shelf, online etc....) what their favorite book of "imaginative fiction" is. I promise you, the answers will  surprise you because not everyone will choose a speculative framed book. That word is natural enough and broad enough to elicit a range of responses. It will also make for a fun display when you showcase the answers while also helping you to gain a better understanding of you community's reading tastes (which in turn helps you decide what other new books to add to your collections going forward).

This award is very similar to the Shirley Jackson Awards and the advice I give about that award as well.

Third, and I already mentioned this, the judges. Look at the that list. They are a who's who of "imaginative fiction" themselves. Their works are also a great place to look for suggestions and similar authors. At the every least, these 10 books would fit in the whole "authors recs of others" category of resources, which I mentioned yesterday as well. 

And you knew this last one was coming....Fourth, the backlist. Again, the backlist of the prize (which is not very old but past honorees are easily accesible at the bottom of the prize page and if you use the drop down menu for the "Book Prize" heading, you can choose a specific year as well, making the backlist of all of the books and authors (including judges) a great resource.

Click through to the Ursula K. Le Guin homepage for more. And remember, I offer this advice for all prize nomination lists, always. You can access that coverage with the links in the header of this post.