The annual Ockham New Zealand Book Awards offer four principal prizes: the Poetry Award, the Acorn Foundation Fiction Prize, the Illustrated Non-Fiction Award and the Royal Society Te Apārangi Award for General Non-Fiction. There are also four Best First Book awards, and a Māori language award for books written entirely in te reo Māori, awarded at the judges’ discretion.
The awards ceremony will be held in May.
Acorn Foundation Fiction Prize:
The Wish Child, by Catherine Chidgey.
Love as a Stranger, by Owen Marshall.
Billy Bird, by Emma Neale.
The Name on the Door is Not Mine, by C.K. Stead.
Poetry:
Fake Aitu / Spirit House, by Tusiata Avia.
Hera Lindsay Bird, by Hera Lindsay Bird.
Fits & Starts, by Andrew Johnston.
This Paper Boat, by Gregory Kan.
Illustrated Non-Fiction:
A History of New Zealand Women, by Barbara Brookes.
New Zealand Wine: The Land, the Vines, the People, by Warren Moran.
Ann Shelton: Dark Matter, edited by Zara Stanhope and managing editor Clare McIntosh.
Bloomsbury South: The Arts in Christchurch 1933-1953, by Peter Simpson.
Royal Society Te Apārangi Award for General Non-Fiction:
This Model World: Travels to the Edge of Contemporary Art, by Anthony Byrt.
My Father’s Island, by Adam Dudding.
The Big Smoke: New Zealand Cities 1840-1920, by Ben Schrader.
Can You Tolerate This?, by Ashleigh Young.