2019 Awards
Acorn Foundation Fiction Prize
The New Ships
Published by: Victoria University Press
Kate Duignan
The New Ships moves deftly back and forth in time and place as Peter Collie, his life eroding after the loss of his wife, tries to make sense of the past and find a way forward. With ageing parents, a flailing relationship with his son, and a past tragedy, the strata of life and family are excavated and entwined with ideas of art and literature to produce an intriguing and elegantly written novel with a wide cast of memorable characters and not a word out of place.
The Cage
Published by: Penguin Random House
Lloyd Jones
Lloyd Jones has delivered a dark but clear-eyed parable of who and what we become when supposedly decent societies master the art of ‘othering’. The narrator’s intense specificity in detailing the two captive strangers’ processes and behaviours, without any seeming emotional context, allows the book to become quietly horrific, the banality of its evil played out as studious observation. It is a courageous book in its insistence upon not directly engaging with its seeming lack of humanity. But the cumulative effect is that its chilling images and their implications do just that.
This Mortal Boy
Published by: Vintage, Penguin Random House
Fiona Kidman
Spare, unsentimental and unforgettable, This Mortal Boy is a masterful recreation of the events leading up to the real-life hanging of “jukebox killer” Albert Lawrence (Paddy) Black at Mount Eden prison in 1955. With seemingly effortless proficiency, Kidman creates an intensely human and believable story as she positions Paddy, newly arrived from Ireland, within the moral panic of post-war New Zealand, the restless vulnerability of Auckland’s teen culture and the damning preconceptions of the legal profession, all leading to the appalling inevitability of his death.
All This by Chance
Published by: Victoria University Press
Vincent O’Sullivan
All This by Chance is a remarkably immersive three-generational family saga revealing the persistence of a wartime past on our personal histories and the undeniability of traumatic memory. In rich, often intense prose Vincent O’Sullivan weaves the dramatic tension of his story through time and place, from a German concentration camp and post-war London to Italy, Greece, Africa and New Zealand, all the while holding his characters to the unbreakable thread that binds them to the impossible demands of the Holocaust.
Mary and Peter Biggs Award for Poetry
Are Friends Electric?
Published by: Victoria University Press
Helen Heath
Helen Heath’s collection, by turns thoughtful and moving, asks how the material world, including technology, might mediate – or replace – human relationships. The experimental first half uses found poems to engage how artifacts – sex dolls, buildings – become objects of human passion. The elegiac second half offers a touching speculative narrative: a woman embeds her deceased partner’s personality into software to avoid letting go. The question Heath suggests is perhaps less whether friends are electric and more whether they can, or should be.
There’s No Place Like the Internet in Springtime
Published by: Victoria University Press
Erik Kennedy
Erik Kennedy’s frequently playful book offers intellectual and aesthetic surprises, not least of which in the way it moves beyond its ironic mode to at times vulnerable meditations on politics, family, relationships and the self. The collection is notable for experiments in structure and prosody, weaving the contemporary, per the collection’s title, with updated nods to received forms such as the sonnet and rhyme. Kennedy’s frequently light tonal touch belies the difficulty of the linguistic manoeuvres it deftly performs.
The Facts
Published by: Victoria University Press
Therese Lloyd
Therese Lloyd’s The Facts combines ekphrasis, literary influence and the personal poem. At times darkly humorous and at others intensely uncomfortable, these poems explore a contemporary approach to the confessional lyric, interrogating emotional experience while maintaining self-awareness and a willingness to look outwards. One engaging thread in the collection is its investigation of the role of art and spirituality in relation to individual trauma and the process of healing.
Poūkahangatus
Published by: Victoria University Press
Tayi Tibble
Tayi Tibble’s first collection brings us fresh, bold poems that saunter and shimmy with an unsettling self-assurance through a range of uncomfortable and familiar tropes. Her words are vital on the page: skewing and renewing the dusky maiden as millennial sex kitten. Her kūpenga snares scenes that an Aotearoa audience will recognise as our own awkward, unequal, power dynamic. Her lyrical kaupapa draws us in to peer at a two-way mirror that is playful, brutal, seductive and disquieting.
Illustrated Non-Fiction Award
Fight for the Forests: The Pivotal Campaigns that Saved New Zealand’s Native Forests
Published by: Potton & Burton
Paul Bensemann
In this powerful account of aspects of recent environmental history in Aotearoa New Zealand, the author brings together a wealth of first-hand accounts and stories to provide an important record of the individuals and groups who made commitments to forest conservation and activism. Historic illustrations and well-chosen archival materials create a sense of context for the reader, while the use of contemporary photography captures the splendour of the natural environment that the book so rightfully celebrates.
Wanted: The Search for the Modernist Murals of E. Mervyn Taylor
Published by: Massey University Press
Bronwyn Holloway-Smith
Thoughtfully designed and beautifully presented, the creators of this book about the murals made by artist E. Mervyn Taylor in the 1950s and 1960s have paid considerable attention to both content and production values and the result is impressive. The writers are diverse, the text engaging, and with the aid of well chosen illustrations the book delivers texture and context to a group of important and often overlooked public art works. It also makes a significant contribution to the broader understanding of artistic and cultural activity in mid-century New Zealand.
Tatau: A History of Sāmoan Tattooing
Published by: Te Papa Press
Sean Mallon and Sébastien Galliot
This striking book detailing 3000 years of Sāmoan tattooing immediately invites closer investigation as a result of its integrated approach to design, photography, typography and writing. The ambitious scope of the subject matter and the knowledge of the main authors results in an important body of new scholarship, while the texts remain clear, accessible and engaging. Invited writers add a range of perspectives and experiences appropriate to the subject and intention of the book.
Birdstories: A History of the Birds of New Zealand
Published by: Potton & Burton
Geoff Norman
This handsomely designed and elegant book offers an expanded history of the birds of Aotearoa New Zealand. The combination of text and illustrations creates a work that is detailed, wide-ranging and informative, illustrating the writer’s advanced understanding of his subject. Birdstories seamlessly brings iconic historical images together with the work of more recent artists and designers to create a volume that presents a real sense of how these birds became a feature of our visual, natural and cultural history, while reinforcing a strong conservation message.
