The judges for the Ockham awards have made confident picks this year – some might even say bold. Several major authors have been left out, particularly in the fiction category.
The short list for the Jann Medlicott Acorn Prize for Fiction this year is Kirsty Gunn’s Pretty Ugly, Damien Wilkins’ Delirious, Tina Makereti’s The Mires and Laurence Fearnley’s At the Grand Glacier Hotel. Kataraina by Becky Manawatu, who won in 2020, and Carl Shuker, who made the short list in the same year with A Mistake, did not make the cut. Fearnley, Gunn and Wilkins have all won the country’s big fiction prize before.
Author and lecturer Thom Conroy, convening judge for the fiction category, says, “This year’s fiction short list features dazzling works that address our moment’s most urgent concerns: climate change, race relations, mobility, sexism, immigration and ageing.”
The short list seems fairly even this year, and I reckon any one of the four could win the $65,000 prize money. Perhaps 2025 will be Makereti’s year. And who will take out the best first book award from the long listers, Michelle Rahurahu’s Poorhara or Saraid de Silva’s Amma?
To help the New Zealand judges pick the category winner, broadcaster and Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature Georgina Godwin will join the fiction judges. (Side note: surely in this day and age etc we no longer need outside assistance in choosing the country’s best novel?)
In the running for the BookHub Award for Illustrated Non-Fiction are Athol McCredie for Leslie Adkin: Farmer Photographer, Matiu Baker and co-authors for Te Ata o Tū The Shadow of Tūmatauenga: The New Zealand Wars Collections of Te Papa, previous winner Jill Trevelyan and co-authors for Edith Collier: Early New Zealand Modernist, and Deirdre Brown and co-authors for Toi Te Mana: An Indigenous History of Māori Art.
It would be surprising if the majestic Te Ata o Tū or Toi Te Mana didn’t win, but stranger things have happened. In a category often awash with nature titles, history and art books dominated this year, said Chris Szekely, convenor of judges for the category, and those chosen were erudite and well-researched narratives and information-rich, educative texts. Debut is a choice of Sight Lines and Sam the Trap Man.
Two debut authors made the shortlist in the General Non-Fiction category: Flora Feltham for Bad Archive and Una Cruickshank for The Chthonic Cycle. They are up against academics Ngāhuia te Awekōtuku’s Hine Toa: A Story of Bravery and Richard Shaw’s The Unsettled: Small Stories of Colonisation. Holly Walker, convenor of judges for the category, says the four titles all share something. “The bravery to confront big, scary, existential questions, and to report back on the experience in ways that make meaning for readers.”
The judges have pitted two essay collections – a form in its ascendance, with a good handful being in the long list – against memoir-histories. If you were going for sheer writing verve, you might opt for Cruickshank’s book (Listener review: “interlocking, antic and anarchic”) for debut, and maybe for the category.
The finalists in the Mary and Peter Biggs Award for Poetry are 92-year-old poet, novelist and critic CK Stead for In the Half Light of a Dying Day; poet and novelist Emma Neale for Liar, Liar, Lick, Spit; Robert Sullivan for Hopurangi – Songcatcher: Poems from the Maramataka; and poet and songwriter Richard von Sturmer for Slender Volumes.
Having left the likes of the late Vincent O’Sullivan and Majella Cullinane out of the long list, the judges have also passed on Tracey Slaughter’s The Girls in the Red House are Singing and James Brown’s Slim Volume.
David Eggleton, convenor of judges for the category, says of the selection that they pitted “militant language poets against equally militant identity poets, spiritual poets, polemical poets, experimental poets and careful traditionalists in pursuit of acknowledging books of literary excellence at the highest level”.
Again, any of these collections could take out the award. Debut title Manualiʻi by Rex Letoa Paget (Saufoʻi Press) is likely to be judged best first book.
The winners, including the four Mātātuhi Foundation Best First Book Awards recipients, will be announced at a public ceremony on May 14 during the Auckland Writers Festival. Outside of the fiction prize, each of the main category winners receives $12,000. Each of the Best First Book winners, for fiction, poetry, general non-fiction and illustrated non-fiction, takes home $3000.
SHORT LISTS
Jann Medlicott Acorn Prize for Fiction
At the Grand Glacier Hotel by Laurence Fearnley (Penguin)
Delirious by Damien Wilkins (Te Herenga Waka University Press)
Pretty Ugly by Kirsty Gunn (Otago University Press)
The Mires by Tina Makereti (Ultimo Press)
BookHub Award for Illustrated Non-Fiction
Edith Collier: Early New Zealand Modernist by Jill Trevelyan, Jennifer Taylor and Greg Donson (Massey University Press)
Leslie Adkin: Farmer Photographer by Athol McCredie (Te Papa Press)
Te Ata o Tū The Shadow of Tūmatauenga: The New Zealand Wars Collections of Te Papa by Matiu Baker, Katie Cooper, Michael Fitzgerald and Rebecca Rice (Te Papa Press)
Toi Te Mana: An Indigenous History of Māori Art by Deidre Brown and Ngarino Ellis with Jonathan Mane-Wheoki (Auckland University Press)
General Non-Fiction Award
Bad Archive by Flora Feltham (Te Herenga Waka University Press)
Hine Toa: A Story of Bravery by Ngāhuia te Awekōtuku (HarperCollins)
The Chthonic Cycle by Una Cruickshank (Te Herenga Waka University Press)
The Unsettled: Small Stories of Colonisation by Richard Shaw (Massey University Press)
Mary and Peter Biggs Award for Poetry
Hopurangi – Songcatcher: Poems from the Maramataka by Robert Sullivan (Auckland University Press)
In the Half Light of a Dying Day by CK Stead (Auckland University Press)
Liar, Liar, Lick, Spit by Emma Neale (Otago University Press)
Slender Volumes by Richard von Sturmer (Spoor Books)
