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      Sri Lankan Author Vajra Chandrasekera Wins 2025 Ursula K. Le Guin Prize for Fiction

      PostSri Lankan Author Vajra Chandrasekera Wins 2025 Ursula K. Le Guin Prize for Fiction [Photo Credit: Sanjeewa Weerasinghe/Macmillion]

      Sri Lankan author Vajra Chandrasekera has won the 2025 Ursula K. Le Guin Prize for Fiction for his novel Rakesfall. The award, presented by the Ursula K. Le Guin Literary Trust, honours works of imaginative fiction that reflect the themes and spirit of the late Le Guin’s writing—such as hope, social insight, and creativity. Chandrasekera’s Rakesfall impressed the judges with its powerful storytelling and exploration of history, identity, and myth, earning him international recognition and marking a major milestone for Sri Lankan literature on the global stage.

      Ursula K. Le Guin Prize

      PostUrsula K. Le Guin [photo: William Anthony]

      The Ursula K. Le Guin Prize is an annual award of $25,000, awarded to an author for a work of "imaginative fiction".

      Established in 2022, it is an English-language literary award presented in honor of Ursula K. Le Guin.

      The nominations for the award must be books published in the U.S. in English or translated into English within a specified time period.

      The award goes to a book that "reflects the concepts and ideas that were central to Ursula's own work, including but not limited to: hope, equity, and freedom; non-violence and alternatives to conflict; and a holistic view of humanity's place in the natural world

      Samantha Harvey was shortlisted for the award for her book Orbital in 2024. The award went to Anne de Marcken for her book It Lasts Forever and Then It's Over.

      One unique thing about the award is that no author can win it twice. The author can not even be nominated for the award again. The award also gives weight to writers whose access to resources may be limited due to race, gender, age, class or other factors; who are working outside of institutional frameworks like MFA programs; who live outside of cultural centers such as New York; and who have not yet been widely recognised for their work.

      Who is Vajra Chandrasekera

      Post

      Vajra Chandrasekera is a Sri Lankan writer from Colombo known for his imaginative and politically resonant speculative fiction. Before gaining wide recognition as a novelist, he published more than fifty short stories in acclaimed magazines such as Analog, Clarkesworld, and Black Static, and also served as a fiction editor for Strange Horizons between 2016 and 2022. His debut novel, The Saint of Bright Doors (2023), is a critically acclaimed fantasy that explores themes of myth, power, and memory, and it won the Nebula Award for Best Novel. His second novel, Rakesfall (2024), continues his exploration of reincarnation, empire, and resistance, earning him the 2025 Ursula K. Le Guin Prize for Fiction. Chandrasekera’s work often intertwines the fantastical with Sri Lanka’s political and historical realities, using speculative fiction as a lens to examine identity, colonialism, and the boundaries between the real and the imagined.

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