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Portland author Alissa Hattman has made the shortlist for the nationwide 2024 Ursula K. Le Guin Prize for Fiction for her first novel, Sift (The 3rd Thing Press, 120 pages, $24). After an open nomination process last April in which authors and fans alike could nominate fiction novels that represented ideas reflected in Le Guin’s work, Hattman joins nine other authors on the shortlist. This year’s recipient of the prize will be chosen by a panel of authors that includes writers such as The Handmaid’s Tale author Margaret Atwood and The Paper Menagerie author Ken Liu.
Le Guin was one of the 20th century’s most prolific science fiction writers and lived in Portland most of her life. First striking critical success in 1964 with the beginning of her Earthsea series, Le Guin won numerous awards during her lifetime, even making history as the first female author to win both of the prestigious Hugo and Nova SF awards.
The winner of the $25,000 Le Guin Prize will be announced on Le Guin’s website Oct. 21, marking what would have been the author’s 94th birthday.
“It’s a huge honor,” Hattman says of Sift’s nomination. “Since I first moved to the Pacific Northwest and I was first introduced to Le Guin, which was in 1999 with this short story called [’The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas’], I have been such a deep admirer of her work. I think having been shortlisted and having this book be in the orbit of Le Guin feels so meaningful to me.”
First published in 2023, Sift follows two women as they search for a place to plant crops in a world whose structures and order have collapsed. Hattman was inspired to write Sift while doing a morning writing exercise. In an attempt to capture her biggest fears, she ended up delving down into the sorrowful inevitability of the death of her loved ones, specifically her mother.
“It started becoming a letter to my mother that became fictionalized over time into something larger, sort of an anticipatory plea for humanity as a whole,” Hattman says.
What resulted was a book inspired by the pandemic, social unrest, and the climate crisis. Sift’s characters are forced to deal with the struggle of a ruined world. “I started to envision these two characters that might be stronger than I could be in those moments,” Hattman says.
This isn’t the first time Le Guin has impacted Hattman’s life. She says attending a live conversation between Le Guin and Atwood at the Arlene Schnitzer Concert Hall in 2010 was particularly important to her as a fellow writer.
“It was so amazing to see the two of them on the stage,” Hattman says. “It was awe inspiring to me, like witnessing an eclipse or something.”