Link:https://www.rnz.co.nz/life/books/kiwi-writer-wins-major-international-fiction-prize
Pip Adam is the first New Zealand author to win the US$25,000 Ursula K. Le Guin Prize for Fiction.
RNZ Life reporters
23 October 2026
4 min read
RNZ Life reporters
23 October 2026
4 min read
Caption:Author Pip Adam.Photo credit:Rachel Lynch
Accepting the prize for her novel Audition
, Adam said she was honoured and was thankful to the judges “for meeting this strange book where it is”.
“This is why I love writing and reading. 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.”
The US$25,000 Ursula K. Le Guin Prize, which is awarded to a writer for a single work of imaginative fiction.
Judges said Adam’s book Audition
was “an astonishing and ultimately joyful work… audacious and surprising, and transcendent in the way it depicts acceptance and hope”.
“Audition is an ambitious and original book about many things: the carceral state, dehumanisation, memory and, perhaps above all, forgiveness as a way forward.
“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.”
In a recorded video message, Adam thanked those who supported her in writing and publishing the book, but also had a special thanks to the late Californian author Le Guin herself: “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: to speak up when staying silent would be easier; to stand up, no matter what the risk.
“I live about as far away as it is possible to, from where the work of Ursula K. Le Guin was written. But when I talk about where my work, my thinking, and my activism come from, she is always there.”
Adam said she was recording her acceptance address from Taranaki, and acknowledged iwi Te Ātiawa, calling for an end to colonisation “in all its forms”.
She was also speaking from a public library, she said, “whose services are threatened, with all these sorts of funding cuts, and politicians debating what are the ‘nice to haves’ and what are the essentials in a society.”
Ursula K. Le Guin (1929-2018) was a multi award-winning American author who wrote a vast catalogue of novels, essays and poetry collections, including the celebrated Left Hand of Darkness
and the Earthsea
series. The award was created in her memory in 2022.
Adam is no stranger to literary awards – in 2025 she was awarded the Creative New Zealand Michael King Writer’s Fellowship, worth NZ$100,000. In 2018, she won the fiction prize at the Ockham New Zealand Book Awards for The New Animals
.
Audition
was first published in New Zealand in 2023 by Te Herenga Waka University Press, and was published in the US in 2025 by Coffee House Press.
Get more out of Life
Our editors pick the best of food, arts, culture, music and lifestyle. Delivered straight to your inbox every Saturday.
More fromBooks
Redwood: The KGB agent who helped stop the Cold War turning hot
A new book tells the true story of how a top Soviet agent wound up working for British Intelligence, motivated by a most unusual and personal reason.
Review: The Starving Bride – Catherine Chidgey at her ingenious best
“The plot swoops into horror, salvation, a protracted scene of hallucinatory revelations which is as good as anything Chidgey has ever written.”
How Sally Rooney’s support for Palestine Action led to pulling books in the UK
What is Palestine Action? And why does her connection to the group mean Normal People and other popular books can no longer be sold in the UK?
Sally Rooney’s books no longer sold in UK over support for banned pro-Palestinian group
Sally Rooney has been a vocal supporter of pro-Palestinian causes and groups, including Palestine Action.
