New Zealand Book Awards Trust · award year
Ockham New Zealand Book Awards 2017
The 2017 Ockham New Zealand Book Awards went to Black Ice Matter by Gina Cole (Best First Book: Fiction), My Father’s Island by Adam Dudding (Best First Book: General Non-Fiction) and A Whakapapa of Tradition: One Hundred Years of Ngāti Porou Carving, 1830-1930 by Ngarino Ellis (Best First Book: Illustrated Non-Fiction), with winners in 5 more categories. 20 books were finalists and 44 books made the longlist across 8 categories.
Winners
Best First Book: Fiction
- Black Ice Mattersource (opens in a new tab)
Best First Book: General Non-Fiction
- My Father’s Islandsource (opens in a new tab)
Best First Book: Illustrated Non-Fiction
- A Whakapapa of Tradition: One Hundred Years of Ngāti Porou Carving, 1830-1930source (opens in a new tab)
Best First Book: Poetry
- Hera Lindsay Birdsource (opens in a new tab)
Fiction
- The Wish Childsource (opens in a new tab)
General Non-Fiction
- Can You Tolerate This?source (opens in a new tab)
Illustrated Non-Fiction
- A History of New Zealand Womensource (opens in a new tab)
Poetry
- Fits & Startssource (opens in a new tab)
Finalists
Fiction
- Billy Birdsource (opens in a new tab)
- Love as a Strangersource (opens in a new tab)
- The Name on the Door is Not Minesource (opens in a new tab)
General Non-Fiction
- My Father's Islandsource (opens in a new tab)
- The Big Smoke: New Zealand Cities, 1840-1920source (opens in a new tab)
- This Model World: Travels to the Edge of Contemporary Artsource (opens in a new tab)
Illustrated Non-Fiction
- Ann Shelton: Dark Mattersource (opens in a new tab)
- Bloomsbury South: The Arts in Christchurch 1933-1953source (opens in a new tab)
- New Zealand Wine: The Land, the Vines, the Peoplesource (opens in a new tab)
Poetry
- Fale Aitu / Spirit Housesource (opens in a new tab)
- Hera Lindsay Birdsource (opens in a new tab)
- This Paper Boatsource (opens in a new tab)
Longlist
Fiction
- A Briefcase, Two Pies and a Penthousesource (opens in a new tab)
- Dad Artsource (opens in a new tab)
- Deleted Scenes for Loverssource (opens in a new tab)
- My Mother and the Hungarianssource (opens in a new tab)
- Stripsource (opens in a new tab)
- Tail of the Taniwhasource (opens in a new tab)
General Non-Fiction
- Being Chinese: A New Zealander's Storysource (opens in a new tab)
- Goneville: A Memoirsource (opens in a new tab)
- New Zealand's Rivers: An Environmental Historysource (opens in a new tab)
- The Broken Decade: Prosperity, Depression and Recovery in New Zealand, 1928-39source (opens in a new tab)
- The Great War for New Zealand: Waikato 1800-2000source (opens in a new tab)
- The World, the Flesh and the Devil: The Life and Opinions of Samuel Marsden in England and the Antipodes, 1765-1838source (opens in a new tab)
Illustrated Non-Fiction
- 101 Works of Artsource (opens in a new tab)
- A Beautiful Hesitationsource (opens in a new tab)
- A Whakapapa of Tradition: One Hundred Years of Ngāti Porou Carving, 1830-1930source (opens in a new tab)
- Futuna: Life of a Buildingsource (opens in a new tab)
- Islands: A New Zealand Journeysource (opens in a new tab)
- Mansfield and Me: A Graphic Memoirsource (opens in a new tab)
Poetry
- And So It Issource (opens in a new tab)
- As the Verb Tensessource (opens in a new tab)
- Back with the Human Conditionsource (opens in a new tab)
- Beside Herselfsource (opens in a new tab)
- In the Supplementary Garden: New and Selected Poemssource (opens in a new tab)
- Thought Horsessource (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)
Shares the most books with
- Dublin Literary Award 44 shared books
- Women's Prize for Fiction 6 shared books