Three debuts made the longlist for the Jann Medlicott Acorn Prize for Fiction, not just because they were impressive first-time novels, but also because they held their own against those of writers who’ve been producing work of quality for decades. But the debut that most impressed the judges was one that handled multiple narrators, shifting time perspectives, urban and rural life, and wildly differing emotional states with enviable aplomb. Auē is a mere pounamu: raw life polished to a sheen that’s beautiful and warm but at the same time a blade with a keen edge. Auē stands alone as best first novel of the year.

The poems in Craven seduced and delighted us even as they revealed a speaker filled with uncertainty, self-loathing, futility. They did that thing that the best lyric poetry does: they showed us an emotional interior, an individual human heart (often a literal heart, a stubborn, durable, hidden muscle) by way of a patient, alert attention to the world beyond the self. This introverted speaker demands to be seen, to be heard — and she is seen and heard in these remarkable poems. Jane Arthur takes, in a phrase lifted from one of them, a “sharp, large knife” to the speaker’s observed reality: she cuts it and refashions it into something new and strange, and transports us there.

This fascinating and unique visual representation of Aotearoa New Zealand reveals us to ourselves, chronicling our history and capturing the present. The authors have brought together complex and often surprising sets of big data about our natural environment, government and culture, and ourselves. And they've presented it in genuinely accessible ways, through a huge variety of fascinating visualisations. Essays by a range of authors contextualise the overall themes, offering different ways to interpret the information, and each map and graph is accompanied by a succinct, factual explanation. The immediate and easy visual appeal of this book belies the comprehensive research and well-considered representation of Aotearoa. We Are Here is relevant to us all.

Shayne Carter says, "I realised that the way to write was to write pretty much the way I talk — kind of terse with some swearing." Dead People I have Known is an illuminating insight into the childhood of a boy who didn’t fit in and who was saved by music. An honest look at the life of a key figure in New Zealand music, Carter’s memoir is refreshingly brash, reeling off the page with searing honesty, ego and obsession. Moving from lyricist to writer, Carter has produced a remarkably accomplished first book. It is rock-star writing that draws the reader in from the first page.