The Ockham New Zealand Book Awards winners for 2026 have been announced! CONGRATULATIONS to all the winners!
To discover more about the winners, visit: https://www.nzbookawards.nz/new-zealand-book-awards/2026-awards/winners/
| Jann Medlicott Acorn Prize for Fiction | ||
|---|---|---|
| All Her Lives | Ingrid Horrocks | Vast and intimate, All Her Lives explores the layered selfhood of women - all that they inherit, sacrifice, imagine and carry forward - and the power found in unravelling and reweaving those selves on their own terms. It is Ingrid Horrocks's first work of fiction. |
| Mary and Peter Biggs Award for Poetry | ||
|---|---|---|
| Black Sugarcane | Nafanua Purcell Kersel | Within the line, within the word and even the letter, these poems speak to creation and translation, destruction and regeneration. |
| BookHub Award for Illustrated Non-Fiction | ||
|---|---|---|
| Mr Ward's Map: Victorian Wellington Street by Street | Elizabeth Cox | In 1891, a remarkable map of Wellington was made by surveyor Thomas Ward. It recorded the footprint of every building, from Thorndon in the north and across the teeming, inner-city slums of Te Aro to Berhampore in the south. Updated regularly over the next 10 years, it detailed hotels, theatres, oyster saloons, brothels, shops, stables, Parliament, the remnants of Maori kainga, the Town Belt, the prisons, the 'lunatic asylum', the hospital and much more, in detail so particular that it went right down to the level of the street lights. Mr Ward's Map uses this giant map and historic images to tell marvellous stories about a vital capital city, its neighbourhoods and its people at the turn of the twentieth century. |
| General Non-Fiction Award | ||
|---|---|---|
| This Compulsion in Us | Tina Makereti | A series of frank and moving essays about the wahine who have shown her many ways of being a Maori woman, the pain and dark humour of living with an alcoholic, a blue boob from breast cancer treatment, and the potential of art to return power to survivors of colonialism. |
| Mūrau o te Tuhi – Māori Language Award | ||
|---|---|---|
| Te Āhua o ngā Kupu Whakaari a Te Kooti | Tā Pou Temara (Ngāi Tūhoe) | A significant scholarly work that examines the depth, authority, and enduring power of kupu whakaari and whakataukī, and the intimate connections to faith, land, history, and people. |
Mātātuhi Foundation Best First Book Awards
| Hubert Church Prize for Fiction | ||
|---|---|---|
| Pastoral Care | John Prins | In John Prins’ lively story collection, both men and women battle to balance domestic and work spheres, how they perceive themselves and how they act. |
| Jessie Mackay Prize for Poetry | ||
|---|---|---|
| No Good | Sophie van Waardenberg | In this debut poetry collection, Sophie van Waardenberg considers girlhood and grief, love and its loss, distance and the return home |
| The Judith Binney Prize for Illustrated Non-Fiction | ||
|---|---|---|
| He Puāwai: A Natural History of New Zealand Flowers | Philip Garnock-Jones | Detailed, accessible and stunningly beautiful in its design, this book is a celebration of scholarship and the power of stereoscopic photography. |
| E.H. McCormick Prize for General Non-Fiction | ||
|---|---|---|
| A Different Kind of Power | Jacinda Ardern | Ardern’s thoughtful and rewarding account sheds important light on those years, and on a Kiwi childhood that somehow inadvertently prepared her for the rigours of leadership. |
