.086330935252″>
Sign up for Life , a weekly lifestyle and entertainment newsletter curated by RNZ’s Life editors and delivered to your inbox every Saturday.
Chidgey has won the award twice before – the only author to have done so – for The Wish Child in 2017 and The Axeman’s Carnival
Catherine Chidgey with her Ockham New Zealand Book Award-winning novel, The Axeman’s Carnival.
Marcel Tromp
Fiction judge Craig Cliff described Horrocks’ first foray into fiction as “emotionally intelligent and historically alert”.
“Across nine elegant, probing stories that range from the late eighteenth century to the unsettled present, from rural Wairarapa to icy Norwegian ports and rave culture Berlin, All Her Lives
Hastings poet and performer Nafanua Purcell Kersel (Satupa‘itea, Faleālupo, Aleipata, Tuaefu) won the Mary and Peter Biggs Award for Poetry for her debut collection Black Sugarcane .
“Each poem pulses with clarity, restraint, and quiet power, revealing the extraordinary within the ordinary,” poetry judge, Daren Kamali said.
Christchurch writer Tina Makereti (Te Ātiawa, Ngāti Tūwharetoa, Ngāti Rangatahi-Matakore, Pākehā) won the General Non-Fiction award for This Compulsion in Us.
Christchurch writer Tina Makereti.
Lisa Gardiner
The memoir about whakapapa , identity and growing up Pākehā was described by judges as “honest, revealing and stimulating work”.
Wellington historian Elizabeth Cox won the BookHub Award for Illustrated Non-Fiction for Mr Ward’s Map: Victorian Wellington Street by Street – a book about the capital city, its neighbourhoods and people at the turn of the 20th century.
The winners of the poetry, non-fiction and illustrated non-fiction categories each received $12,000.
Tā Pou Temara (Ngāi Tūhoe) KNZM, professor and tohunga of Māori language and thought, received Māori language award Te Mūrau o te Tuhi for Te Āhua o Ngā Kupu Whakaari a Te Kooti
Wellington professor and author Damien Wilkins won the major prize last year for his novel Delirious , described by judges as “intimate, funny, honest” and “unforgettable”.
Wellington professor and author Damien Wilkins, left, and the cover of his novel ‘Delirious’.
Supplied / Ebony Lamb Photography
Wilkins first won the fiction award in 1994 with The Miserables . He was a runner-up in 2001 for Nineteen Windows Under Ash The Fainter .
Four Best First Book Awards, each worth $3000, were also presented at the awards to Auckland author John Prins, for short story collection Pastoral Care ; Auckland poet Sophie van Waardenberg for Poetry for No Good ; professor of botany Philip Garnock-Jones for He Puāwai: A Natural History of New Zealand Flowers and former New Zealand Prime Minister Dame Jacinda Ardern for her memoir, A Different Kind of Power .
Arden told Newsroom last week that she wouldn’t be attending the awards ceremony . She has an engagement in Australia, where she now lives, for another of her books. Her sister, Louise attended the awards and Ardern’s office said any prize money would be donated.
2026 Ockham New Zealand Book Awards shortlisted titles
Jann Medlicott Acorn Prize for Fiction
All Her Lives by Ingrid Horrocks (Te Herenga Waka University Press)
Hoods Landing by Laura Vincent (Ngāti Māhanga, Ngāpuhi) (Āporo Press)
How to Paint a Nude by Sam Mahon (Ugly Hill Press)
The Book of Guilt by Catherine Chidgey (Te Herenga Waka University Press)
Mary and Peter Biggs Award for Poetry
Black Sugarcane by Nafanua Purcell Kersel (Satupa‘itea, Faleālupo, Aleipata, Tuaefu) (Te Herenga Waka University Press)
No Good by Sophie van Waardenberg (Auckland University Press)
Sick Power Trip by Erik Kennedy (Te Herenga Waka University Press)
Terrier, Worrier: A Poem in Five Parts by Anna Jackson (Auckland University Press)
BookHub Award for Illustrated Non-Fiction
Garrison World: Redcoat Soldiers in New Zealand and Across the British Empire by Charlotte Macdonald (Bridget Williams Books)
He Puāwai A Natural History of New Zealand Flowers by Philip Garnock-Jones (Auckland University Press)
Mark Adams: A Survey – He Kohinga Whakaahua by Sarah Farrar (Massey University Press and Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki)
Mr Ward’s Map: Victorian Wellington Street by Street by Elizabeth Cox (Massey University Press)
General Non-Fiction Award
A Different Kind of Power by Jacinda Ardern (Penguin, Penguin Random House)
Northbound: Four Seasons of Solitude on Te Araroa by Naomi Arnold (HarperCollins Aotearoa New Zealand)
The Hollows Boys: A Story of Three Brothers & the Fiordland Deer Recovery Era by Peta Carey (Potton & Burton)
This Compulsion in Us by Tina Makereti (Te Ātiawa, Ngāti Tūwharetoa, Ngāti Rangatahi-Matakore, Pākehā) (Te Herenga Waka University Press)