The Ockham New Zealand Book Awards are the country's premier literary honours for books written by New Zealanders. First established in 1968 as the Wattie Book Awards (later the Goodman Fielder Wattie Book Awards), they have also been known as the Montana New Zealand Book Awards and the New Zealand Post Book Awards.

Awards are given for Fiction (the Jann Medlicott Acorn Prize for Fiction), Poetry (the Mary and Peter Biggs Award for Poetry), Illustrated Non-Fiction (the Booksellers Aotearoa New Zealand Award for Illustrated Non-Fiction) and General Non-Fiction. There are also four awards for first-time authors (the Mātātuhi Foundation Best First Book Awards) and, at the judges’ discretion, Te Mūrau o te Tuhi, a Māori Language Award.

Panels of three judges each are selected to judge each of the categories. Their longlists are announced in late January or early February, and the shortlist of 16 titles is revealed in early March. Winners are announced at an awards ceremony held in May each year, in collaboration with the Auckland Writers Festival. The 2023 ceremony was staged at the Kiri Te Kanawa theatre on Wednesday 17 May 2023.

Thanks to the generosity of the late Jann Medlicott, the winner of the fiction prize will receive $65,000 in 2024. Winners of the other three principal category awards each receive $12,000, as does the recipient of Te Mūrau o te Tuhi. Each of the four Mātātuhi Foundation Best First Book prizes is worth $3,000.

The Ockham New Zealand Book Awards are governed by the New Zealand Book Awards Trust Te Ohu Tiaki i Te Rau Hiringa (a registered charity), which also administers the New Zealand Book Awards for Children and Young Adults and Phantom Billstickers National Poetry Day.

The Short List for the Jann Medlicott Acorn Prize for Fiction

A Better Place by Stephen Daisley

The tragedies of war and prevailing social attitudes are viewed with an unflinching but contemporary eye as Stephen Daisley’s lean, agile prose depicts faceted perspectives on masculinity, fraternity, violence, art, nationhood and queer love in this story about twin brothers fighting in WW2. With its brisk and uncompromising accounts of military action, and deep sensitivity to the plights of its characters, A Better Place is by turns savage and tender, absurd and wry.

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Audition by Pip Adams

Three giants hurtle through the cosmos in a spacecraft called Audition powered by the sound of their speech. If they are silent, their bodies continue to grow. Often confronting and claustrophobic, but always compelling, Audition asks what happens when systems of power decide someone takes up too much space and what role stories play in mediating truth. A mind-melting, brutalist novel, skilfully told in a collage of science fiction, social realism, and romantic comedy.

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Birnam Wood by Eleanor Catton

When Mira Bunting, the force behind guerilla gardening collective Birnam Wood, meets her match in American tech billionaire Robert Lemoine, the stage is set for a tightly plotted and richly imagined psychological thriller. Eleanor Catton’s page-turner gleams with intelligence, hitting the sweet spot between smart and accessible. And like an adrenalised blockbuster grafted on to Shakespearian rootstock, it accelerates towards an epic conclusion that leaves readers’ heads spinning.

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Lioness by Emily Perkins

After marrying the older, wealthier Trevor, Teresa Holder has transformed herself into upper-class Therese Thorn, complete with her own homeware business. But when rumours of corruption gather around one of Trevor’s property developments, the fallout is swift, and Therese begins to reevaluate her privileged world. Emily Perkins weaves multiple plotlines and characters with impressive dexterity. Punchy, sophisticated and frequently funny, Lioness is an incisive exploration of wealth, power, class, female rage, and the search for authenticity.

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The 2024 Finalists