New Zealand Book Awards Trust · award year
Ockham New Zealand Book Awards 2018
The 2018 Ockham New Zealand Book Awards went to Baby by Annaleese Jochems (Best First Book: Fiction), Driving to Treblinka: A Long Search for a Lost Father by Diana Wichtel (Best First Book: General Non-Fiction) and Caves: Exploring New Zealand’s Subterranean Wilderness by Marcus Thomas and Neil Silverwood (Best First Book: Illustrated Non-Fiction), with winners in 5 more categories. 20 books were finalists and 45 books made the longlist across 8 categories.
Winners
Best First Book: Fiction
Best First Book: General Non-Fiction
- Driving to Treblinka: A Long Search for a Lost Fathersource (opens in a new tab)
Best First Book: Illustrated Non-Fiction
- Caves: Exploring New Zealand’s Subterranean Wildernesssource (opens in a new tab)
Best First Book: Poetry
- Fully Clothed and So Forgetfulsource (opens in a new tab)
Fiction
- The New Animalssource (opens in a new tab)
General Non-Fiction
- Driving to Treblinka: A Long Search for a Lost Fathersource (opens in a new tab)
Illustrated Non-Fiction
- Tuai: A Traveller in Two Worldssource (opens in a new tab)
Poetry
- Night Horsesource (opens in a new tab)
Finalists
Fiction
- Babysource (opens in a new tab)
- Salt Picnicsource (opens in a new tab)
- Sodden Downstreamsource (opens in a new tab)
General Non-Fiction
- Dancing with the King: The Rise and Fall of the King Country, 1864-1885source (opens in a new tab)
- Drawn Out: A Seriously Funny Memoirsource (opens in a new tab)
- Tears of Rangi: Experiments Across Worldssource (opens in a new tab)
Illustrated Non-Fiction
- Gordon Walters: New Visionsource (opens in a new tab)
- The Face of Nature: An Environmental History of the Otago Peninsulasource (opens in a new tab)
- Tōtara: A Natural and Cultural Historysource (opens in a new tab)
Poetry
- Anchor Stonesource (opens in a new tab)
- Rāwāhisource (opens in a new tab)
- The Yieldsource (opens in a new tab)
Longlist
Fiction
- Five Stringssource (opens in a new tab)
- Heloisesource (opens in a new tab)
- Icelandsource (opens in a new tab)
- Tesssource (opens in a new tab)
- The Beat of the Pendulumsource (opens in a new tab)
- The Earth Cries Outsource (opens in a new tab)
General Non-Fiction
- A Strange Beautiful Excitement: Katherine Mansfield’s Wellington 1888-1903source (opens in a new tab)
- Cleansing the Colony: Transporting Convicts from New Zealand to Van Diemen’s Landsource (opens in a new tab)
- Fearless: The Extraordinary Untold Story of New Zealand’s Great War Airmensource (opens in a new tab)
- Phoney Wars: New Zealand Society in the Second World Warsource (opens in a new tab)
- The 9th Floor: Conversations with Five New Zealand Prime Ministerssource (opens in a new tab)
- Tāngata Ngāi Tahu: People of Ngāi Tahusource (opens in a new tab)
Illustrated Non-Fiction
- Caves: Exploring New Zealand’s Subterranean Wildernesssource (opens in a new tab)
- Good-bye Maoriland: The Songs & Sounds of New Zealand’s Great Warsource (opens in a new tab)
- New China Eyewitness: Roger Duff, Rewi Alley and the Art of Museum Diplomacysource (opens in a new tab)
- Strangers Arrive: Emigrés and the Arts in New Zealand, 1930-1980source (opens in a new tab)
- Teenagers: The Rise of Youth Culture in New Zealandsource (opens in a new tab)
- Ten x Ten: Art at Te Papasource (opens in a new tab)
- Undreamed of … 50 Years of the Frances Hodgkins Fellowshipsource (opens in a new tab)
Poetry
- Flow: Whanganui River Poemssource (opens in a new tab)
- Fully Clothed and So Forgetfulsource (opens in a new tab)
- The Internet of Thingssource (opens in a new tab)
- The Ones Who Keep Quietsource (opens in a new tab)
- Tightropesource (opens in a new tab)
- What is Left Behindsource (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