New Zealand Book Awards Trust · award year

Ockham New Zealand Book Awards 2013

The 2013 Ockham New Zealand Book Awards went to I Got His Blood on Me by Lawrence Patchett (Best First Book: Fiction), Moa: The Life and Death of New Zealand's Legendary Bird by Quinn Berentson (Best First Book: Non-Fiction) and Graft by Helen Heath (Best First Book: Poetry), with winners in 4 more categories. 19 books were finalists across 7 categories.

Winners

Best First Book: Fiction

  1. I Got His Blood on Mesource (opens in a new tab)

Best First Book: Non-Fiction

  1. Moa: The Life and Death of New Zealand's Legendary Birdsource (opens in a new tab)

Best First Book: Poetry

  1. Graftsource (opens in a new tab)

Fiction

  1. The Big Musicsource (opens in a new tab)

General Non-Fiction

  1. Civilisation: Twenty Places on the Edge of the Worldsource (opens in a new tab)

Illustrated Non-Fiction

  1. Pat Hanlysource (opens in a new tab)

Poetry

  1. The Darling Northsource (opens in a new tab)

Finalists

Fiction

  1. In the Absence of Heroessource (opens in a new tab)
  2. The Forrestssource (opens in a new tab)
  3. The Intentions Booksource (opens in a new tab)

General Non-Fiction

  1. Patched: The History of Gangs in New Zealandsource (opens in a new tab)
  2. The Meeting Place: Māori and Pākehā Encounters, 1642-1840source (opens in a new tab)
  3. The Search for Anne Perrysource (opens in a new tab)

Illustrated Non-Fiction

  1. His Own Steam: The Work of Barry Brickellsource (opens in a new tab)
  2. Selling the Dream: The Art of Early New Zealand Tourismsource (opens in a new tab)
  3. Stag Spooner: Wild Man from the Bushsource (opens in a new tab)

Poetry

  1. A Man Runs into a Womansource (opens in a new tab)
  2. Snow White's Coffinsource (opens in a new tab)
  3. The Lifeguard: Poems 2008-2013source (opens in a new tab)

About the Ockham New Zealand Book Awards

The New Zealand Book Awards ran as the Montana New Zealand Book Awards (2006-2009), the New Zealand Post Book Awards (2010-2014) and the Ockham New Zealand Book Awards (2016-2025). No awards were held in 2015. Year is the ceremony year. Winners and finalists for 2006-2014 come from Christchurch City Libraries award pages (fallback; the official site lists winners only for those years). 2016-2017 longlists and finalists come from the official longlist and finalist news releases, and winners from the official past-winners page. 2018-2025 come from the official per-year winners, shortlist and longlist pages. Categories keep stable names across sponsor renames: the Acorn and Jann Medlicott Acorn prizes are Fiction, the Mary and Peter Biggs Award is Poetry, the Royal Society and later General Non-Fiction Award is General Non-Fiction, and the Booksellers and BookHub awards are Illustrated Non-Fiction. The Montana-era Illustrative category is mapped to Illustrated Non-Fiction. Its other non-fiction categories (Biography, History, Environment, Lifestyle & Contemporary Culture, Reference & Anthology) stay as their own categories. From 2010 non-fiction was split into General and Illustrated. Best first book awards are their own categories: Hubert Church (Best First Book: Fiction), Jessie Mackay (Best First Book: Poetry), E.H. McCormick (Best First Book: Non-Fiction until 2014, then Best First Book: General Non-Fiction) and Judith Binney (Best First Book: Illustrated Non-Fiction, from 2016). Ockham best first book awards are drawn from the longlist and have no published shortlist, so only winners appear. Levels: Winner; Honor for the Montana fiction runners-up; Finalist for shortlisted books; Longlist for longlisted books not shortlisted (Ockham only). Excluded: the Montana Medals and Book of the Year (they duplicate a category winner), People's and Readers' Choice and Booksellers' Choice (public or trade votes), the Maori Language Award, the reviewer awards, and the separate children's and young adult awards, which are a different program. Iwi affiliations in brackets are dropped from author names. Title spellings follow the books where the source has typos.

Organization: New Zealand Book Awards Trust. Years are award years, which can differ from publication years. Official site (opens in a new tab)

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