Crawford Award

As this week's reader, we bring you Seattle-based writer and artist Jared Pekicek.

His inventive debut novel, The West Passage, won the 2025 Crawford Award and was shortlisted for the Ursula K.

Le Guin Prize for Fiction in the same year.

Jared describes the novel as a dark fantasy book set in a crumbling city-sized palace ruled by towering eldritch ladies.

One thing we commented on was how little overlap the Le Guin list has with other awards.

But Eddie Clark wrote in to point out that Christopher Caldwell's Call and Response actually won the Crawford Award.

That collection was also shortlisted for the Ignite.

And just this past week, it also won the British Fantasy Award.