Our Finest Illustrated Non-Fiction Award Crafting Aotearoa: Protest Tautohetohe: A Cultural History of Making Objects of Resistance, The New Zealand Book Awards Trust has immense in New Zealand and the Persistence and Defiance pleasure in presenting the 16 finalists in the 2020 Wider Moana Oceania Stephanie Gibson, Matariki Williams, Ockham New Zealand Book Awards, the country’s Puawai Cairns Karl Chitham, Kolokesa U Māhina-Tuai, Published by Te Papa Press most prestigious awards for literature. Damian Skinner Published by Te Papa Press Bringing together a variety of protest matter of national significance, both celebrated and Challenging the traditional categorisations The Trust is so grateful to the organisations that continue to share our previously disregarded, this ambitious book of art and craft, this significant book traverses builds a substantial history of protest and belief in the importance of literature to the cultural fabric of our society. the history of making in Aotearoa New Zealand activism within Aotearoa New Zealand. from an inclusive vantage. Māori, Pākehā and Creative New Zealand remains our stalwart cornerstone funder, and The design itself is rebellious in nature Moana Oceania knowledge and practices are and masterfully brings objects, song lyrics we salute the vision and passion of our naming rights sponsor, Ockham presented together, and artworks to Residential. This year we are delighted to reveal the donor behind the acknowledging the the centre of our influences, similarities enormously generous fiction prize as Jann Medlicott, and we treasure attention. Well and divergences of written, and with our ongoing relationships with the Acorn Foundation, Mary and Peter each. The engaging contributions by texts by over 66 Biggs, and MitoQ. We are also fortunate to partner with the Auckland significant voices, passionate experts this book retells our Writers Festival, which showcases the awards ceremony as a marquee discuss traditional and national history with contemporary handmade festival event and features a number of the finalists in its programme. sophistication, from objects, accompanied contact to 2019, and by gorgeous images from an alternative Winnowing down this year’s 172 entries to a shortlist of 16 and then of the works, alongside perspective — one deciding the ultimate winners from this talented group is a demanding historical and of dissent. and unenviable task, and we have great respect for our 13 judges, contemporary photos. whose names are listed on each category page that follows, along with their comments on the finalists. Our fiction panel is joined at We Are Here: McCahon Country this stage by award-winning Australian novelist Tara June Winch. An Atlas of Aotearoa Justin Paton Published by Penguin Random House Chris McDowall and Tim Denee We pay tribute to all the authors whose work has been recognised Published by Massey University Press Colin McCahon looms over the art scene of Aotearoa like the Colossus of Rhodes, This fascinating and unique visual representation and honoured in this year's awards. We encourage you to seek so high you can’t get over him, so wide of Aotearoa New Zealand reveals us to ourselves, you can’t get round him … so the song goes. out their titles in bookstores and libraries countrywide, and to chronicling our history and capturing the present. To get a clearer bead on the artist on the The authors have brought together complex and join us at the Ockham New Zealand Book Awards ceremony in hundredth anniversary of his birth, Justin Paton often surprising sets of big data, presenting them takes us on a thematic road trip consisting of the Kiri Te Kanawa Theatre at Auckland’s Aotea Centre on Tuesday in genuinely accessible ways. Essays by a range fourteen illuminating chapters. Into the Valley, of authors contextualise the visualisations, 12 May to hear them read from their books. across the Bridge offering the reader and deep into the different angles for Night of the artist, interpretation. The we finally arrive at For more details and tickets visit www.writersfestival.co.nz immediate and our very own ‘There’, easy visual appeal with Colin sitting of this book belies the beside us, no longer comprehensive research an imponderable and well-considered giant, but as a fellow representation of New Zealander, Aotearoa. It is relevant enjoying the view. to us all. Judges: Odessa Owens (convenor), Hamish Coney, Lana Lopesi Mary and Peter Biggs Award for Poetry Jann Medlicott Acorn Prize for Fiction Moth Hour How to Live Auē Pearly Gates Anne Kennedy Helen Rickerby Becky Manawatu Owen Marshall Published by Auckland University Press Published by Auckland University Press Published by Mākaro Press Published by Vintage, Penguin Random House Anne Kennedy puts her extraordinary talents Helen Rickerby sets down an ambitious Becky Manawatu’s remarkable debut novel Pearly Gates is the second-time mayor of a onto the page through ‘variations on a theme’. manifesto on which she convincingly delivers. is a taonga pounamu: raw life polished to a provincial South Island town, owner of a thriving The poems are sharp, without sentimentalism, Her collection is an exploration of women’s sheen that’s beautiful, warm and stone-hard. real-estate business and dedicated husband to and show much deftness in their musicality while writing throughout history, illuminating the Auē introduces orphaned Arama, deposited Helen. If he stands for a third time, will he win? being at the same time soft, strong and beautiful. life stories of women as diverse as Hipparchia in rural Kaikōura with his Aunty Kat and Is he actually as beloved The 1970s era of music, politics, the Vietnam War of Maroneia, Ban Zhao, George Eliot and Mary hair-trigger Uncle Stu, as he believes? By keeping and social change is Shelley. Their stories and his brother Taukiri, the book moving by merely evoked without cliché, are set out in striking a young man fending for threatening to have a plot, providing a historical sequences of poetry himself in the big smoke. master storyteller Marshall context for both that play with form. There is violence and creates a subtle, deliciously a personal and a What do women need sadness, not least when sly character study inside political commentary to be philosophers? Jade and Aroha and Toko a love letter to small-town on contemporary Why are women stumble into the brutal New Zealand that’s society as well as silenced? Who can kinship of gang life. But perceptive and funny a consideration of the tell us how to live? there is buoyant humour, despite being devotedly universal experience of These questions too, remarkable insights, understated. death, grief, mourning, and many others are forgiveness and a and looking back as explored in this clever, massive suffusion of love. we age. engaging and forthright collection. Lay Studies How I Get Ready A Mistake Halibut on the Moon Steven Toussaint Ashleigh Young Carl Shuker David Vann Published by Victoria University Press Published by Victoria University Press Published by Victoria University Press Published by Text Publishing Lay Studies is formidably but not inaccessibly An Ashleigh Young poem is a world: hospitable, In Carl Shuker's novel, an operation in a This deep, dark and relentless novel tells brainy, and it’s as much a crash course in strange, a little off kilter. The poems in How I Get Wellington hospital goes horribly wrong under of Jim, a manic-depressive, who travels Thomist and neoplatonic philosophy as it Ready bristle with humour and curiosity; they the supervision of Elizabeth Taylor, a capable, from Alaska to California to see his estranged is an interrogation of goodness, truth and are idiosyncratically observant and keenly ambitious female surgeon. A Mistake is a children, his brother, Gary, his distant parents — religious faith — concepts that have lost empathetic. That empathy is extended to masterful dissection of truth and fallibility, and a therapist. That it’s told from Jim’s intellectual currency the reader — the poems confide and beguile, hubris and high-minded perspective makes it a in our neoliberal era providing access not just sexism, in the form kind of a grim ventriloquism, but which Steven to the speaker’s travails of a literary thriller. with Jim as a mad, blackly Toussaint treats with but also to those of lives This sharp-eyed, humorous truth-teller — urgency and conviction. remote in history: the sharp-elbowed tale even more so when you Eliot, Zukofsky, Olson compulsive disorder of seamlessly combines discover that he’s based and above all Pound — a sensitive young man a close observer's on the author’s father. the Pound of the Pisan living in the early 20th understanding Vann’s mesmerising Cantos — are just some Century, for example, of medicine and its prose makes it a compelling, of the evident influences or the emotional political machinations fearsomely unsentimental in this densely allusive, anguish of the late with keen social story that speeds along like theologically questioning medieval mystic, observation and a freight train in the night. collection. Margery Kempe. rare storytelling nous. Judges: Kiri Piahana-Wong (convenor), Phillippa Duffy, Tim Upperton Judges: Chris Baskett, Mark Broatch, Nic Low General Non-Fiction Award Honouring the long legacy of New Zealand book awards In various forms the New Zealand Book Awards have been honouring and rewarding the talented writers of Aotearoa since 1968. Here we pay tribute to the authors who have taken home prizes over this rich 52-year history. Dead People I Have Known Shirley Smith: 2019: Fiona Kidman, Helen Heath, Sean Mallon and Sébastien Galliot, Joanne Drayton, Tīmoti Kāretu and Wharehuia Milroy, Kirsten Warner, Tayi Tibble, John Reid, Chessie Henry. 2018: Pip Adam, Elizabeth Smither, Shayne Carter An Examined Life Alison Jones and Kuni Kaa Jenkins, Diana Wichtel, Annaleese Jochems, Hannah Mettner, Marcus Thomas Published by Victoria University Press Sarah Gaitanos and Neil Silverwood.