"The Ockham New Zealand Book Awards are the country’s premier literary honours for books written by New Zealanders. First established in 1968 as the Wattie Book Awards (later the Goodman Fielder Wattie Book Awards), they have also been known as the Montana New Zealand Book Awards and the New Zealand Post Book Awards. Ockham Residential became the principal sponsor in 2015.
Awards are given for Fiction (the Jann Medlicott Acorn Prize for Fiction), Poetry (the Mary and Peter Biggs Award for Poetry), Illustrated Non-Fiction (the BookHub Award for Illustrated Non-Fiction) and General Non-Fiction. There are also four awards for first-time authors (the Mātātuhi Foundation Best First Book Awards) and, at the judges’ discretion, Te Mūrau o te Tuhi, a Māori Language Award."
Annotations sourced from the publishers.
WINNER - Jann Medlicott Acorn Prize for Fiction. "Delirious is an unforgettable work of fiction that navigates momentous themes with elegance and honesty. With a gift for crisp, emotionally rich digression, Damien Wilkins immerses readers in Mary…
WINNER - Mary and Peter Biggs Award for Poetry. "Liar, Liar, Lick, Spit displays an exceptional ability to turn confessional anecdotes into quicksilvery flashes of insight. It's a book about fibs and fables; and telling true stories which are…
WINNER - Bookhub Award for Illustrated Non-Fiction. "Described as groundbreaking, a landmark publication and a ‘bold and ambitious endeavour’, Toi Te Mana is a comprehensive survey of Māori art. Twelve years in the making, extensively researched and…
WINNER - General Non-Fiction Award. "Hine Toa is a rich, stunningly evocative memoir that defies easy categorisation. As well as painting a vivid picture of Ngāhuia te Awekōtuku’s early life, from her childhood on 'the pā' at Ōhinemutu to her many…
WINNER - Hubert Church Prize for Fiction | Mātātuhi Foundation Best First Book Awards. "Poorhara is a road trip novel unlike any other. Two cousins, Erin and Star, pile into a 1994 Daihatsu Mira in a desperate bid to escape the suffocation of racism…
WINNER - Jessie Mackay Prize for Poetry | Mātātuhi Foundation Best First Book Awards. "This debut collection from Rex Letoa Paget convinces through an incantatory lyricism and chant-like rhythms that surge like ocean waves. Manuali'i ensnares and…
WINNER - Judith Binney Prize for Illustrated Non-Fiction | Mātātuhi Foundation Best First Book Awards. "An academic tome on the expansiveness and diversity of women’s art practice in Aotearoa, Sight Lines is derived from author Kirsty Baker’s…
WINNER - E.H. McCormick Prize for General Non-Fiction | Mātātuhi Foundation Best First Book Awards. "We are living through terrifying times – perhaps a mass extinction event – and that can be hard to think about. In this singular essay collection,…
Shortlist - Jann Medlicott Acorn Prize for Fiction. "Following a disastrous family holiday, Libby and Curtis make a promise: If they ever visit the West Coast of the South Island again, it will be to stay at the majestic Grand Glacier Hotel.
Twenty…
Shortlist - Jann Medlicott Acorn Prize for Fiction. "In Pretty Ugly, Kirsty Gunn reminds us that ambiguity and complication are elemental forces in a human life, and grist to the storyteller’s mill. These 13 darkly compelling stories, set in New…
Shortlist - Jann Medlicott Acorn Prize for Fiction. "Three women give birth in different countries and different decades. In the near future, they become neighbours in a coastal town in Aotearoa New Zealand. Single parent Keri has her hands full…
Shortlist - Mary and Peter Biggs Award for Poetry. "After rejoining social media, Robert Sullivan wrote and posted a poem a day over two and a half months – the poems collected in Hopurangi—Songcatcher. Inspired by the cyclical energies of the…
Shortlist - Mary and Peter Biggs Award for Poetry. "An old friend, a new character – C. K. Stead is scribe to love and grief in this beautiful new collection.
In two sequences the poet plays with the lines of history and love, the fictional and the…
Shortlist - Mary and Peter Biggs Award for Poetry. "Slender Volumes locates the cypress trees of Buddhist folklore in Onehunga and the teachings of the Zen tradition along its foreshore.
Elaborating on kōans collected by poet-philosopher Eihei…
Shortlist - Bookhub Award for Illustrated Non-Fiction. "Published to coincide with the reopening of the Sarjeant Gallery in Whanganui, this substantial and handsome book examines the continuing impact of Whanganui-born and British-trained Edith…
Shortlist - Bookhub Award for Illustrated Non-Fiction. "Leslie Adkin (1888–1964) was a Levin farmer, photographer, geologist, ethnologist and explorer, a gifted amateur and renaissance man, of sorts, who used photography to document his scholarly…
Shortlist - Bookhub Award for Illustrated Non-Fiction. "The wars of 1845–72 were described by James Belich as ‘bitter and bloody struggles, as important to New Zealand as were the Civil Wars to England and the United States’. The conflict’s themes…
Shortlist - General Non-Fiction Award. "Bold, beautiful and constantly surprising essays about life, loss, joy and the fabric of memory.
In this deftly woven work Flora Feltham explores the corners where her memories are stashed: the archive vault,…
Shortlist - General Non-Fiction Award. "After Richard Shaw published his acclaimed memoir The Forgotten Coast in 2021, he made contact with Pākehā with long settler histories who were coming to grips with the truth of their respective families’ …
