Te Herenga Waka alumna and previous Writer in Residence takes home prestigious Ursula K. Le Guin Prize
pip adam has won the 2026 Ursula K. Le Guin Prize for her novel Audition, becoming the first author from Aotearoa to win the USD$25,000 prize.
pip completed her Master of Arts in Creative Writing with Distinction at Victoria University of Wellington in 2007. She then completed her PhD in Creative Writing at the International Institute of Modern Letters (IIML) in 2012, supervised by Professor Damien Wilkins, Director of the IIML.
In 2021, pip worked on the winning novel, Audition, during her appointment as IIML Writer in Residence, a position dedicated to fostering New Zealand writing.
“We’ve known about pip’s remarkable fiction for a while. Now international readers are paying attention. It’s an exciting and moving moment in our literature and a lesson in how the writer who persists with a singular vision can break through," says Damien.
Audition has been described as a genre defying novel, or sometimes ‘uncategorisable’. Blending science fiction and social realism, Audition explores power and exclusion, and imagines a new type of justice in the face of systemic violence.
First published by Te Herenga Waka University Press (THWUP) in 2023, Audition was also published in Australia and the United Kingdom in the same year. It’s publication in the United States by Coffee House Press in 2025 made the novel eligible for the 2026 Ursula K. Le Guin prize.
Given to a writer for a single work of imaginative fiction, the prize recognises the type of writers that 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.
Judges of the prize spoke of Audition as, "An ambitious and original book about many things: the carceral state, dehumanisation, memory and, perhaps above all, forgiveness as a way forward. pip adam uses innovative narrative structure and impeccable prose to do what SFF [Science Fiction and Fantasy]—what only SFF at its best—can do: make metaphor concrete to completely change our understanding not just of what is happening in the narrative but also how today’s society works. 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. An astonishing and ultimately joyful work."
When accepting the award, pip said, "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."
Te Herenga Waka and THWUP is proud to have supported pip from the beginning of her career, with her work exemplifying the THWUP mission to nurture distinctive literary voices and bring new ideas into public conversation.
“This prize is a great reminder that fiction and creative work play an important part in how Te Herenga Waka engages with the world,” says Caoimhe McKeogh, publicist at THWUP.
"Publishing imaginative writing like pip’s contributes to our role as a global-civic university. Just like alumni from other departments, pip is thinking deeply about power, justice, and alternatives to the status quo. We’re delighted that her novel has travelled so far and received this recognition.”