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Scoop
15-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Scoop
Lit Whanganui Festival Lands Two Major Winners
Lit Whanganui is thrilled to announce that two major prizewinners from this week's Ockham New Zealand Book Awards – Ngāhuia Te Awekōtuku and Damien Wilkins – will be speaking at Whanganui's booklovers' festival which is set to run from 19-21 September. Lit Whanganui chair Karen White says this is a major coup for the festival. 'We knew we were onto a good thing when we made our author selection and it is wonderful to have this confirmed with not one but two Ockham winners speaking at Whanganui's booklovers' festival this year. 'The Ockhams are New Zealand's top book awards — the literary equivalent of the Oscars — so it's a huge deal to have these two celebrated authors headlining our festival.' White says this is just the beginning with a further eight acclaimed speakers who will be appearing at Lit Whanganui to be announced over several weeks in June, and the full programme of events released in July. 'We can assure you that we have some exciting surprises in store,' says White. 'There's a fantastic mix of voices and genres — something for every kind of booklover — as well as some interesting events in the pipeline.' She says people can keep up-to-date with festival announcements by signing up for the Lit Whanganui e-newsletter at and following Lit Whanganui on Facebook and Instagram. 'Out-of-towners take note, this is the perfect excuse to start planning a weekend escape to one of New Zealand's most creative and culturally rich cities,' White says. 'With numerous literary festival events hosted at the iconic Te Whare o Rehua Sarjeant Gallery, it's also a great opportunity to explore this stunning gallery which has recently reopened after a major redevelopment and to soak up the charms of Whanganui's heritage and cultural precinct with Whanganui Regional Museum nearby.' Hine Toa by Ngāhuia Te Awekōtuku Curator, critic and activist Ngāhuia Te Awekōtuku won the General Non-Fiction award for her captivating memoir, Hine Toa, published by HarperCollins. 'Remarkable. At once heartbreaking and triumphant.' – Patricia Grace 'Extraordinary, vivid, riveting. I learned, I laughed and I wept over this book.' – Dame Fiona Kidman 'Brilliant. This timely coming-of-age memoir by an iconic activist will rouse the rebel in us all. I loved it.' – Tina Makereti Delirious by Damien Wilkins Damien Wilkins, director of the International Institute of Modern Letters, won the Jann Medlicott Acorn Prize for Fiction for his novel about families and ageing, Delirious, published by Te Herenga Waka Press. 'A New Zealand novel of grace and humanity. How does Wilkins do it? These are flawed and immensely satisfying characters – you close your eyes at the faulty, circuitous routes they take. Delirious is a marvel of a book.' – Witi Ihimaera ' Delirious by Damien Wilkins is a beautiful work of fiction and if it reduces you to tears then you will not be alone. . . . The book of the year is all heart.' – Steve Braunias, Newsroom 'Funny, sharp, sad and profound, Delirious made me laugh, think, weep and actually beat my breast. A masterpiece.' – Elizabeth Knox, The Conversation
NZ Herald
15-05-2025
- Entertainment
- NZ Herald
‘We need more writers who can just remember', says Ockham-winning wahine professor
'It was certainly a surprise, I wasn't expecting anything quite like that,' she said. 'I felt greatly honoured, it was spontaneous Māori creativity, which I think we need a lot more of to heal the wounds and reset the world that we're currently attempting to live within.' Category convenor Holly Walker said Hine Toa was a 'rich, stunningly evocative memoir that defies easy categorisation'. 2025 Ockham New Zealand Book Awards '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 creative and academic achievements, it is also a fiery social and political history that chronicles the transformative second half of the 20th century in Aotearoa from a vital queer, Māori, feminist perspective.' Awekōtuku said she felt it was vital for the next generation to have a sense of New Zealand's history, of 'what these islands used to be like before those realities completely disappear'. 'I am so concerned that the immediacy, and the instant gratification of contemporary cultural and social environments now and stimuli now, really focuses on the immediate and yet having reached this immediate we should know from where we come.' '... We need more writers who can just remember and rejoice and reflect and actually share and in the process of a political memory or a personal memoir like Hine Toa we can start doing that work.' Toi te Mana: An Indigenous History of Māori Art won the BookHub Award for Illustrated Non-Fiction. Twelve years in the making, the landmark 600-page volume is a sweeping survey of Māori art – from Polynesian voyaging waka to contemporary practice – by art historians Deidre Brown (Ngāpuhi, Ngāti Kahu) and Ngarino Ellis (Ngāpuhi, Ngāti Porou). Judges praised the book as a 'visual tour de force of enduring significance'. ' Toi Te Mana is extensively researched and thoughtfully written, casting a wide, inclusive net. The result is a beautifully designed visual tour de force, and a cultural framework that approaches toi mahi with intelligence and insight.' Wellington professor and author Damien Wilkins won the $65,000 Jann Medlicott Acorn Prize for Fiction for his novel Delirious, described by judges as 'intimate, funny, honest' and 'unforgettable'. 'With a gift for crisp, emotionally rich digression, Damien Wilkins immerses readers in Mary and Pete's grapples with ageing and their contemplations of lost loved ones who still thrive in vivid memories.' Wilkins, now director of the International Institute of Modern Letters at Victoria University, first took the fiction award in 1994 with The Miserables. He was a runner-up in 2001 for Nineteen Windows Under Ash and again in 2007 for The Fainter. He nearly didn't make it on stage to bag his latest prize. 'I was delayed getting out of Wellington – there were plane problems. I boarded my flight at 7pm, which was the start time of the ceremony so I was racing against the clock to get there,' Wilkins told Morning Report today. 'I was picked up by a very kind festival driver at the airport, rushed through Auckland streets, she had permission to exceed the speed limit and pay the fines and I ran on stage at the last possible second to hear that I won. 'It was pretty dramatic and James Bond-like.' Editor, novelist and poet Emma Neale won the Mary and Peter Biggs Award for Poetry for her collection Liar, Liar, Lick, Spit. Poetry category convenor David Eggleton said the collection displayed '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 perceived by others as tall stories; and the knock-on or flow-on effects of distrust, the scales dropping from one's eyes. It's about power and a sense of powerlessness; it's about belief and the loss of belief, it's about trust and disillusion; it's about disenchantment with fairytales. It's about compassion.' The Jann Medlicott Acorn Prize for Fiction winner was presented with $65,000. The Poetry, Illustrated Non-Fiction, General Non-Fiction award recipients were each presented with $12,000. Four Best First Book awards were also presented at the ceremony, with winners receiving $3000 each and a 12-month membership subscription to the New Zealand Society of Authors. Full list of Ockham winners and finalists: Jann Medlicott Acorn Prize for Fiction won by Delirious, Damien Wilkins, Te Herenga Waka University Press. Shortlisted: At the Grand Glacier Hotel, Laurence Fearnley, Penguin, Penguin Random House; Pretty Ugly, Kirsty Gunn, Otago University Press; The Mires, Tina Makereti (Te Ātiawa, Ngāti Tūwharetoa, Ngāti Rangatahi-Matakore, Pākehā), Ultimo Press. Mary and Peter Biggs Award for Poetry won by Liar, Liar, Lick, Spit, Emma Neale, Otago University Press. Shortlisted: Hopurangi – Songcatcher: Poems from the Maramataka, Robert Sullivan (Ngāpuhi, Kāi Tahu), Auckland University Press; In the Half Light of a Dying Day, C.K. Stead, Auckland University Press; Slender Volumes, Richard von Sturmer, Spoor Books. BookHub Award for Illustrated Non-Fiction won by Toi Te Mana: An Indigenous History of Māori Art, Deidre Brown (Ngāpuhi, Ngāti Kahu) and Ngarino Ellis (Ngāpuhi, Ngāti Porou) with Jonathan Mane-Wheoki (Ngāpuhi, Te Aupōuri, Ngāti Kurī), Auckland University Press. Shortlisted: Edith Collier: Early New Zealand Modernist, Jill Trevelyan, Jennifer Taylor and Greg Donson, Massey University Press; Leslie Adkin: Farmer Photographer, Athol McCredie, Te Papa Press; Te Ata o Tū The Shadow of Tūmatauenga: The New Zealand Wars Collections of Te Papa, Matiu Baker (Ngāti Toa Rangatira, Te Āti Awa, Ngāti Raukawa, Ngāti Whakaue), Katie Cooper, Michael Fitzgerald and Rebecca Rice, Te Papa Press. General Non-Fiction Award won by Hine Toa: A Story of Bravery, Ngāhuia te Awekōtuku (Te Arawa, Tūhoe, Ngāpuhi, Waikato), HarperCollins Publishers Aotearoa New Zealand. Shortlisted: Bad Archive, Flora Feltham, Te Herenga Waka University Press; The Chthonic Cycle, Una Cruickshank, Te Herenga Waka University Press; The Unsettled: Small Stories of Colonisation, Richard Shaw, Massey University Press.
NZ Herald
15-05-2025
- Entertainment
- NZ Herald
‘We need more writers who can just remember' says Ockham-winning wahine professor
'It was certainly a surprise, I wasn't expecting anything quite like that,' she said. 'I felt greatly honoured, it was spontaneous Māori creativity, which I think we need a lot more of to heal the wounds and reset the world that we're currently attempting to live within.' Category convenor Holly Walker said Hine Toa was a 'rich, stunningly evocative memoir that defies easy categorisation'. 2025 Ockham New Zealand Book Awards '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 creative and academic achievements, it is also a fiery social and political history that chronicles the transformative second half of the 20th century in Aotearoa from a vital queer, Māori, feminist perspective.' Awekōtuku said she felt it was vital for the next generation to have a sense of New Zealand's history, of 'what these islands used to be like before those realities completely disappear'. 'I am so concerned that the immediacy, and the instant gratification of contemporary cultural and social environments now and stimuli now, really focuses on the immediate and yet having reached this immediate we should know from where we come.' '... We need more writers who can just remember and rejoice and reflect and actually share and in the process of a political memory or a personal memoir like Hine Toa we can start doing that work.' Toi te Mana: An Indigenous History of Māori Art won the BookHub Award for Illustrated Non-Fiction. Twelve years in the making, the landmark 600-page volume is a sweeping survey of Māori art – from Polynesian voyaging waka to contemporary practice – by art historians Deidre Brown (Ngāpuhi, Ngāti Kahu) and Ngarino Ellis (Ngāpuhi, Ngāti Porou). Judges praised the book as a 'visual tour de force of enduring significance'. ' Toi Te Mana is extensively researched and thoughtfully written, casting a wide, inclusive net. The result is a beautifully designed visual tour de force, and a cultural framework that approaches toi mahi with intelligence and insight.' Wellington professor and author Damien Wilkins won the $65,000 Jann Medlicott Acorn Prize for Fiction for his novel Delirious, described by judges as 'intimate, funny, honest' and 'unforgettable'. 'With a gift for crisp, emotionally rich digression, Damien Wilkins immerses readers in Mary and Pete's grapples with ageing and their contemplations of lost loved ones who still thrive in vivid memories.' Wilkins, now director of the International Institute of Modern Letters at Victoria University, first took the fiction award in 1994 with The Miserables. He was a runner-up in 2001 for Nineteen Windows Under Ash and again in 2007 for The Fainter. He nearly didn't make it on stage to bag his latest prize. 'I was delayed getting out of Wellington – there were plane problems. I boarded my flight at 7pm, which was the start time of the ceremony so I was racing against the clock to get there,' Wilkins told Morning Report today. 'I was picked up by a very kind festival driver at the airport, rushed through Auckland streets, she had permission to exceed the speed limit and pay the fines and I ran on stage at the last possible second to hear that I won. 'It was pretty dramatic and James Bond-like.' Editor, novelist and poet Emma Neale won the Mary and Peter Biggs Award for Poetry for her collection Liar, Liar, Lick, Spit. Poetry category convenor David Eggleton said the collection displayed '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 perceived by others as tall stories; and the knock-on or flow-on effects of distrust, the scales dropping from one's eyes. It's about power and a sense of powerlessness; it's about belief and the loss of belief, it's about trust and disillusion; it's about disenchantment with fairytales. It's about compassion.' The Jann Medlicott Acorn Prize for Fiction winner was presented with $65,000. The Poetry, Illustrated Non-Fiction, General Non-Fiction award recipients were each presented with $12,000. Four Best First Book awards were also presented at the ceremony, with winners receiving $3000 each and a 12-month membership subscription to the New Zealand Society of Authors. Full list of Ockham winners and finalists: Jann Medlicott Acorn Prize for Fiction won by Delirious, Damien Wilkins, Te Herenga Waka University Press. Shortlisted: At the Grand Glacier Hotel, Laurence Fearnley, Penguin, Penguin Random House; Pretty Ugly, Kirsty Gunn, Otago University Press; The Mires, Tina Makereti (Te Ātiawa, Ngāti Tūwharetoa, Ngāti Rangatahi-Matakore, Pākehā), Ultimo Press. Mary and Peter Biggs Award for Poetry won by Liar, Liar, Lick, Spit, Emma Neale, Otago University Press. Shortlisted: Hopurangi – Songcatcher: Poems from the Maramataka, Robert Sullivan (Ngāpuhi, Kāi Tahu), Auckland University Press; In the Half Light of a Dying Day, C.K. Stead, Auckland University Press; Slender Volumes, Richard von Sturmer, Spoor Books. BookHub Award for Illustrated Non-Fiction won by Toi Te Mana: An Indigenous History of Māori Art, Deidre Brown (Ngāpuhi, Ngāti Kahu) and Ngarino Ellis (Ngāpuhi, Ngāti Porou) with Jonathan Mane-Wheoki (Ngāpuhi, Te Aupōuri, Ngāti Kurī), Auckland University Press. Shortlisted: Edith Collier: Early New Zealand Modernist, Jill Trevelyan, Jennifer Taylor and Greg Donson, Massey University Press; Leslie Adkin: Farmer Photographer, Athol McCredie, Te Papa Press; Te Ata o Tū The Shadow of Tūmatauenga: The New Zealand Wars Collections of Te Papa, Matiu Baker (Ngāti Toa Rangatira, Te Āti Awa, Ngāti Raukawa, Ngāti Whakaue), Katie Cooper, Michael Fitzgerald and Rebecca Rice, Te Papa Press. General Non-Fiction Award won by Hine Toa: A Story of Bravery, Ngāhuia te Awekōtuku (Te Arawa, Tūhoe, Ngāpuhi, Waikato), HarperCollins Publishers Aotearoa New Zealand. Shortlisted: Bad Archive, Flora Feltham, Te Herenga Waka University Press; The Chthonic Cycle, Una Cruickshank, Te Herenga Waka University Press; The Unsettled: Small Stories of Colonisation, Richard Shaw, Massey University Press.
Newsroom
14-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Newsroom
Wilkins flies in late to win Ockhams
High drama on Wednesday night at the Ockham national book awards as Damien Wilkins only just made it from Wellington to Auckland in time to be presented with $65,000 as the winner of the fiction prize. Delayed flights meant the Wellington writer had to literally run onto the stage at the Aotea Centre for the final announcement of the night at the Ockham awards held in the Aotea Centre. His novel Delirious won the fiction prize and $65,000. In any case, righteousness and natural justice prevailed at the 2025 Ockham national book awards with the two best books published last year winning major awards: huzzah to Wilkins, and to Rotorua activist Ngāhuia te Awekōtuku, who won the $12,000 nonfiction prize for her astounding memoir Hine Toa. Both books are destined to re-enter the bestseller charts like two blazing comets. Other winners included Emma Neale, who won the $12,000 poetry prize for Liar, Liar, Lick, Spit, and Deidre Brown and Ngarino Ellis, authors of the winner of the $12,000 illustrated nonfiction prize, Toi Te Mana: An Indigenous History of Māori Art. Prize money of $3000 was also awarded to the winners of best first book. The full list appears at the end of this article. The main spotlight belonged to Wilkins and his $65,000 windfall. It has been a long time between drinks: he won the fiction prize way back in 1994 for his debut novel The Miserables (recent inane review on GoodReads, by someone called Annie: 'Found it rather inaccessible, meandering, plotless and dry. Who gives out these literary awards anyway?') although he also won the prize for best YA novel for Aspiring at the 2020 children's book awards. Delirious may be his masterpiece, the book he was meant to write. It tells the story of a nice old couple who sell up their home and move to the arid lands of a retirement village. Pip Adam's review in ReadingRoom got it perfectly: 'At its heart it's a deeply affecting novel about the almost unbearable pains of being alive that are usually impossible for us to look at directly … It's an incredibly accomplished novel which demonstrates a deep and lived understanding of the ways we carry on while knowing what is coming for us at increasing speed the longer we live. In many ways this book destroyed me. It brought me to tears more than once, but it's a gift.' Note the highly emotional response. It's also there in the recent review in Landfall, by Breton Dukes, who wrote, 'Like Damien, maybe you have had a sister die, or a mum go nutty … In Delirious, Wilkins disappears entirely and that's what makes it a great book; it's what makes a masterpiece—the absence of author, combined with riveting content, faultless craft and heart, heart, heart.' If you have not read it already then you ought, ought, ought. Same goes for Hine Toa by Ngāhuia te Awekōtuku. It's such a powerful book. (Congratulations, also, are due to HarperCollins, a commercial publisher which rarely features in the rarefied air of book awards; the commercially unpressured university presses picked up six of the eight Ockham awards on Wednesday. The other exception was Saufo'i Press, which published the winner of the best first book of poetry, Manuali'I by Rex Letoa Paget.) I expected Ngāhuia would write fascinating chapters on her involvement with emergent Māori rights group Ngā Tamatoa at Auckland University in the 1970s, and she did not disappoint. But she was just as compelling in her personal stories growing up in Rotorua and, later, realising she was lesbian. It's a sexy book. Hine Toa marks her second win at the national book awards, after winning the culture prize in 2008 as co-author of Mau Moko: The World of Māori Tattoo. No surprises that Deidre Brown and Ngarino Ellis' Toi Te Mana: An Indigenous history of Māori art won the illustrated nonfiction prize. As Eva Corlett wrote in The Guardian, 'A landmark book celebrating Māori art has clocked up a couple of impressive firsts: not only is it the most comprehensive account of creative work by Indigenous New Zealanders ever published, it is also the first wide-ranging art history written entirely by Māori scholars.' It has since been published internationally, by the University of Chicago Press in the US and Australia. As for Emma Neale's prize-winning Liar, Liar, Lick, Spit, it follows the possibly equal honour of being named by poetry czar Nick Ascroft in ReadingRoom as one of the best collections of 2024. 'A lot always happens in an Emma Neale poem,' wrote the czar. 'You are not left meandering imponderables. Each is told with her fluid grace.' Nicely put; and indeed I saw Ascroft at the awards ceremony, drinking fluids with considerable grace. It was a good night. Arts minister Paul Goldsmith was there. Miriama Kamo was a gracious and regal MC. Huzzah, most of all, to the winners of the 2025 awards. They deserve their loot and more so they deserve the most important thing: to be read. JANN MEDLICOTT ACORN PRIZE FOR FICTION Delirious by Damien Wilkins (Te Herenga Waka University Press) GENERAL NONFICTION AWARD Hine Toa: A Story of Bravery by Ngāhuia te Awekōtuku (HarperCollins) BOOKHUB AWARD FOR ILLUSTRATIVE NONFICTION Toi te Mana: An Indigenous History of Māori Art by Deidre Brown and Ngarino Ellis (Auckland University Press) MARY AND PETER BIGGSY PRIZE FOR POETRY Liar, Liar, Lick, Spit by Emma Neale (Otago University Press) HUBERT CHURCH PRIZE FOR BEST FIRST WORK OF FICTION Poorhara by Michelle Rahurahu (Te Herenga Waka University Press) JESSIE MACKAY PRIZE FOR BEST FIRST BOOK OF POETRY Manuali'I by Rex Letoa Paget (Saufo'i Press) JUDITH BINNEY PRIZE FOR BEST FIRST BOOK OF ILLUSTRATED NONFICTION Sight Lines: Women and Art in Aotearoa by Kirsty Baker (Auckland University Press) EH McCORMICK PRIZE FOR BEST FIRST BOOK OF GENERAL NONFICTION The Chthonic Cycle by Una Cruickshank (Te Herenga Waka University Press)
