Emily Perkins, winner of the Jann Medlicott Acorn Prize for Fiction at the 2024 Ockham New Zealand Book Awards announced in Auckland on Wednesday night. Photo / Lyndon at LK Creative
Emily Perkins, winner of the Jann Medlicott Acorn Prize for Fiction at the 2024 Ockham New Zealand Book Awards announced in Auckland on Wednesday night. Photo / Lyndon at LK Creative
The country’s richest writing prizes have been awarded - and the winners have delivered politicians some reading homework.
Emily Perkins took the $65,000 top fiction prize at last night’s Ockham New Zealand Book Awards with Lioness, a novel about class, privilege and female rage.
Immediately after the win, Perkins said she was in “absolute shock”.
“Am I having an out-of-body experience? Has the world divided into several parts and I’m just on some weird offshoot of reality?”
The Wellington-based author was awarded the $65,000 Jann Medlicott Acorn Prize for Fiction from a shortlist that included 2013 Booker Prize winner Eleanor Catton’s Birnam Wood, Pip Adam’s Audition and Stephen Daisley’s A Better Place.
Judges said at first glance, Lioness was a psychological thriller about a privileged, moneyed family and its unravelling, but “look closer and it is an incisive exploration of wealth, power, class, female rage and the search for authenticity”. They called it “disturbing, deep, smart, and funny as hell”.
Perkins told the Herald that writers help people understand different viewpoints and hear other voices.
“We need writing to help us all think ... to investigate below the surface, the story underneath the story. We need writing to really take the time to get at those deeper truths. It’s always urgent, but certainly now we cannot afford to do without it”.
She said in a small country, the arts needed government support.
“We have to accept that. It’s crazy to think otherwise. It’s never going to be sustainable through other means and it should be seen as an integral part of life.”
In her acceptance speech, Perkins had called fiction a “necessary magic”. She urged everybody to seek out New Zealand book recommendations from librarians and booksellers, but singled out political leaders for some reading homework.
“To our politicians, to our decision makers ... Read a story. Read a novel ... remember how vulnerable and layered and loving and connected we all are and how much we need each other.”
Perkins was not the only speechmaker to add politics to her prose.
Other big winners at the national awards, announced at Auckland’s Aotea Centre, were Damon Salesa’s An Indigenous Ocean: Pacific Essays (general non-fiction), Gregory O’Brien’s Don Binney: Flight Path (illustrated non-fiction) and Grace Yee’s Chinese Fish (poetry). Tā Pou Temara KNZM (Ngāi Tūhoe) was presented with the 2024 Te Mūrau o te Tuhi Māori Language Award for Te Rautakitahi O Tūhoe ki Ōrākau (Auckland University Press). All five received $12,000.
Four “best first book awards” (carrying a $3000 prize) were also announced - Emma Hislop’s Ruin and Other Stories (fiction), Megan Kitching’s At the Point of Seeing (poetry), Ryan Bodman’s Rugby League in New Zealand: A People’s History (illustrated non-fiction) and Emma Wehipeihana (published as Emma Espiner) for There’s a Cure for This(general non-fiction).
Wehipeihana’s memoir detailed her experiences as a Māori medical student and junior doctor during the Covid-19 pandemic.
She told the audience: “As a doctor, I’ve seen the inside of most orifices of the human body and held the viscera of the living and the dead and I can tell you without a doubt that it’s the arts and artists who elevate our existence from being sacks of meat circling a dying star to something magical ...”
Wehipeihana said she wanted politicians - including Prime Minister Christopher Luxon and Minister of Arts, Culture and Heritage, Paul Goldsmith who were in attendance at the awards ceremony - to hear “that the front line of the health system can speak back”.
Storytelling “gives meaning to what’s happening to all of us. It is the apocalypse. It feels like that, you know, nationally and globally, and without the arts and without storytellers to at least document our experience and give us hope ...“
Tā Pou Temara KNZM (Ngāi Tūhoe) was presented with the 2024 Te Mūrau o te Tuhi Māori Language Award for Te Rautakitahi O Tūhoe ki Ōrākau (Auckland University Press). Photo / Lyndon at LK Creative
Earlier, Nicola Legat, New Zealand Book Awards Trust chair, had referred to the “grit and brilliance” of the publishing industry which contributed more than $290m per annum to the country’s GDP.
“It’s a sector that receives only modest levels of government support but yet totally punches above its weight.”
Christopher Luxon also took the stage. He said the book awards - now in their 56th year - “play an important role in the cultural life of New Zealand, highlighting the importance of literature in understanding ourselves and the world around us. The stories we tell are central to our national identity.”
Some 171 books were submitted for judging in this year’s Ockham Awards, with 16 finalists selected from a longlist of 44 books across four categories. Last night’s ceremony, MC’ed by Jack Tame, also marked the start of the Auckland Writers Festival, which ends on Sunday evening.
2024 Ockham New Zealand Book Awards - full results
Finalists: Stephen Daisley, A Better Place, (Text Publishing); Pip Adam, Audition (Te Herenga Waka University Press); Eleanor Catton, Birnam Wood (Te Herenga Waka University Press).
Mary and Peter Biggs Award for Poetry
Winner: Grace Yee, Chinese Fish (Giramondo Publishing).
Finalists: Megan Kitching, At the Point of Seeing (Otago University Press); Bill Nelson, Root Leaf Flower Fruit (Te Herenga Waka University Press); Isla Huia (Te Āti Haunui a-Pāpārangi, Uenuku) Talia (Dead Bird Books).
Booksellers Aotearoa New Zealand Award for Illustrated Non-Fiction
Winner: Gregory O’Brien, Don Binney: Flight Path (Auckland University Press).
Finalists: Liv Sisson, Fungi of Aotearoa: A Curious Forager’s Field Guide (Penguin, Penguin Random House); Lauren Gutsell, Lucy Hammonds and Bridget Reweti (Ngāti Ranginui, Ngāi Te Rangi), Marilynn Webb: Folded in the Hills (Dunedin Public Art Gallery); Ryan Bodman, Rugby League in New Zealand: A People’s History (Bridget Williams Books).
General Non-Fiction Award
Winner: Damon Salesa, An Indigenous Ocean: Pacific Essays (Bridget Williams Books).
Finalists: Barbara Else, Laughing at the Dark: A Memoir (Penguin, Penguin Random House); Jeff Evans, Ngātokimatawhaorua: The Biography of a Waka (Massey University Press); Emma Wehipeihana (published as Emma Espiner) (Ngāti Tukorehe, Ngāti Porou), There’s a Cure for This (Penguin, Penguin Random House).
