Latest news with #Ockhams
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
Newsroom
13-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Newsroom
Ockhams: in Emily's footsteps
The biggest night of the year in New Zealand literature is set to take place. Last year Emily Perkins waltzed off the Ockham book awards stage with $64,000 in her purse. Tonight, at around 9.30pm, one of four shortlisted authors will follow her as the 2025 winner of the Jann Medlicott Acorn Prize for Fiction, and pocket $65,000. It will be the final grand announcement of the awards, following prizes of $12,000 to winners of nonfiction, illustrated nonfiction and poetry. It takes place at the Aotea Centre in Auckland. Miriamo Kamo will act as MC. She received online criticism on Monday for her alleged mispronunciation of Chinese names as MC at this weekend's Barfoot & Thompson real estate awards but perhaps that was a mischievous attack and in any case no Chinese names are shortlisted for the Ockhams, only 19 European, eight Māori and one Pasifika. They make up a very wide range of authors – quite young, very old, some talented – who are in line for a shot of money and recognition for their hard work and brilliant ideas. I have made my feelings clear about who I hope wins the fiction prize and nonfiction prize, but recuse myself from chiming in with my five cents' worth about the poetry prize on account of the fact I am friends and allies with all four shortlisted writers, and have no opinion on the illustrated non-fiction prize. Anyway, and as ever, who cares what I think; it's the night of the judges, of their whims and tastes and reckonings; and alongside the shortlisted authors, and their publishers and editors and designers and proofreaders, the judges, too, ought to be thanked for their time and commitment. They don't earn a fortune for all their reading but they take the job seriously. The sponsors also deserve special cheers. The New Zealand book trade is in a bit of a slump. Bookstore sales are slow. Funding is increasingly difficult. Publishers – everyone remembers the day of the long knives at Penguin last year – are vulnerable. Huzzah, then, to the continued and positive support of Ockham (this marks their 10th year as principal backer) and the other sponsors at the national book awards: Creative New Zealand, the Acorn Foundation (via the late Jann Medlicott, who guaranteed her support of the fiction award in perpetuity), Peter and Marry Biggsy, Booksellers Aotearoa New Zealand, e-commerce quango BookHub, and The Mātātuhi Foundation. But nothing happens without the writers. It all starts with their decision to write, their faith and wit and delusion and stamina and resolve. Congratulations are due to all the authors of the 16 shortlisted titles. The fiction prize is contested by Damien Wilkins, author of my favourite book of any kind in 2024, Delirious, a beautiful novel about old age; Kirsty Gunn's book of short stories Pretty Ugly (which includes her dark masterpiece 'All Gone', by far the most disturbing story to have ever appeared in ReadingRoom); and The Mires by Tina Makereti and At the Grand Glacier Hotel by Laurence Fearnley. To nonfiction. Two books of essays that I didn't read, The Chthonic Cycle by Una Cruickshank and Bad Archive by Flora Feltham, will compete with Richard Shaw's excellent book The Unsettled: Small Stories of Colonisation and my favourite, Ngāhuia te Awekōtuku's memoir Hine Toa: A Story of Bravery, published by HarperCollins and one of the chief reasons I named them publisher of the year at the 2024 ReadingRoom awards. The four very, very good collections shortlisted for the poetry prize are Hopurangi – Songcatcher: Poems from the Maramataka by the nicest man in New Zealand letters, Robert Sullivan; Liar, Liar, Lick, Spit by Emma Neale, who has just finished editing my next book and was a total delight to work with; In the Half Light of a Dying Day by my amigo CK Stead; and Slender Volumes by the fabulous Richard von Sturmer. There are good pictures and some interesting text in the four books up for the illustrated nonfiction award, Edith Collier: Early New Zealand Modernist, Toi Te Mana: An Indigenous History of Māori Art, Leslie Adkin: Farmer Photographer and Te Ata o Tū The Shadow of Tūmatauenga: The New Zealand Wars Collections. ReadingRoom will magically reappear this evening at about 9:31pm with commentary on the winners.
NZ Herald
10-05-2025
- Entertainment
- NZ Herald
What to know before the Ockham Book Awards are announced next week
Wednesday is the biggest night of the literary year, when the winners of New Zealand's most prestigious book awards – the Ockhams – are announced. Here's our handy guide to the nominees – and what we said about them at the time. Fiction The big-money prize at the awards. The winner of the Jann Medlicott Acorn Prize for Fiction – named for the generous Tauranga radiologist who died in 2022 – will collect $65,000. Previous winners include (pictured above)
