New Zealand Book Awards Trust · award year
Ockham New Zealand Book Awards 2025
The 2025 Ockham New Zealand Book Awards went to Poorhara by Michelle Rahurahu (Best First Book: Fiction), The Chthonic Cycle by Una Cruickshank (Best First Book: General Non-Fiction) and Sight Lines: Women and Art in Aotearoa by Kirsty Baker (Best First Book: Illustrated Non-Fiction), with winners in 5 more categories. 20 books were finalists and 47 books made the longlist across 8 categories.
Winners
Best First Book: Fiction
- Poorharasource (opens in a new tab)
Best First Book: General Non-Fiction
- The Chthonic Cyclesource (opens in a new tab)
Best First Book: Illustrated Non-Fiction
- Sight Lines: Women and Art in Aotearoasource (opens in a new tab)
Best First Book: Poetry
- Manuali'isource (opens in a new tab)
Fiction
- Delirioussource (opens in a new tab)
General Non-Fiction
- Hine Toa: A Story of Braverysource (opens in a new tab)
Illustrated Non-Fiction
- Toi Te Mana: An Indigenous History of Māori Artsource (opens in a new tab)
Poetry
- Liar, Liar, Lick, Spitsource (opens in a new tab)
Finalists
Fiction
- At the Grand Glacier Hotelsource (opens in a new tab)
- Pretty Uglysource (opens in a new tab)
- The Miressource (opens in a new tab)
General Non-Fiction
- Bad Archivesource (opens in a new tab)
- The Chthonic Cyclesource (opens in a new tab)
- The Unsettled: Small Stories of Colonisationsource (opens in a new tab)
Illustrated Non-Fiction
- Edith Collier: Early New Zealand Modernistsource (opens in a new tab)
- Leslie Adkin: Farmer Photographersource (opens in a new tab)
- Te Ata o Tū The Shadow of Tūmatauenga: The New Zealand Wars Collections of Te Papasource (opens in a new tab)
Poetry
- Hopurangi - Songcatcher: Poems from the Maramatakasource (opens in a new tab)
- In the Half Light of a Dying Daysource (opens in a new tab)
- Slender Volumessource (opens in a new tab)
Longlist
Fiction
- All That We Knowsource (opens in a new tab)
- Ammasource (opens in a new tab)
- Ashsource (opens in a new tab)
- Katarainasource (opens in a new tab)
- Poorharasource (opens in a new tab)
- The Royal Freesource (opens in a new tab)
General Non-Fiction
- Becoming Aotearoa: A New History of New Zealandsource (opens in a new tab)
- Feijoa: A Story of Obsession & Belongingsource (opens in a new tab)
- Hard by the Cloud Housesource (opens in a new tab)
- Kahurangi: The Nature of Kahurangi National Park and Northwest Nelsonsource (opens in a new tab)
- The Beautiful Afternoonsource (opens in a new tab)
- The Invasion of Waikato Te Riri ki Tainuisource (opens in a new tab)
- The Mermaid Chronicles: A Midlife Mer-moirsource (opens in a new tab)
- The Twisted Chainsource (opens in a new tab)
- Unreel: A Life in Reviewsource (opens in a new tab)
Illustrated Non-Fiction
- A Different Light: First Photographs of Aotearoasource (opens in a new tab)
- Fenoga Tāoga Niue I Aotearoa: Niue Heritage Journey in Aotearoasource (opens in a new tab)
- Force of Nature Te Aumangea o Te Ao Tūroa: A Conservation History of Forest & Bird 1923-2023source (opens in a new tab)
- Golden Enterprise: New Zealand Chinese Merchants 1860s-1970ssource (opens in a new tab)
- Sam the Trap Man: Cracking Yarns and Tall Tales from the Bushsource (opens in a new tab)
- Sight Lines: Women and Art in Aotearoasource (opens in a new tab)
Poetry
- /Slantedsource (opens in a new tab)
- Fox Spirit on a Distant Cloudsource (opens in a new tab)
- Hibiscus Tartsource (opens in a new tab)
- Manuali'isource (opens in a new tab)
- Slim Volumesource (opens in a new tab)
- The Girls in the Red House are Singingsource (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