2025 Awards

Jann Medlicott Acorn Prize for Fiction

Delirious

Published by: Te Herenga Waka University Press

Damien Wilkins

Delirious is an unforgettable work of fiction that navigates momentous themes with elegance and honesty. With a gift for crisp, emotionally rich digression, Damien Wilkins immerses readers in Mary and Pete’s grapples with ageing and their contemplations of lost loved ones who still thrive in vivid memories. What stood out to the judges was the assured but understated touch of prose as it flows elegantly across decades, threads the intricacies of relationship, and fathoms the ongoing evolution of a couple’s grief. Wilkins manages to contend with colonialism, racism, and climate change while remaining intimate, funny, and, above all, honest. Delirious is an absorbing, inspiring novel, and a damn fine read.

Mary and Peter Biggs Award for Poetry

Liar, Liar, Lick, Spit

Published by: Otago University Press

Emma Neale

Liar, Liar, Lick, Spit displays an exceptional ability to turn confessional anecdotes into quicksilvery flashes of insight. It's a book about fibs and fables; and telling true stories which are perceived by others as tall stories; and the knock-on or flow-on effects of distrust, the scales dropping from one's eyes. It's about power and a sense of powerlessness; it's about belief and the loss of belief, it's about trust and disillusion; it's about disenchantment with fairytales. It's about compassion. Emma Neale is a writer fantastically sensitive to figurative language and its possibilities. There's also scepticism, a sense of malaise and unease, but bolstered by a quick wit, liveliness and humour, where thought moves through the lines, arriving simultaneously with the word.

BookHub Award for Illustrated Non-Fiction

Toi Te Mana: An Indigenous History of Māori Art

Published by: Auckland University Press

Deidre Brown (Ngāpuhi, Ngāti Kahu), Ngarino Ellis (Ngāpuhi, Ngāti Porou) and Jonathan Mane-Wheoki (Ngāpuhi, Te Aupōuri, Ngāti Kurī)

Described as groundbreaking, a landmark publication and a ‘bold and ambitious endeavour’, Toi Te Mana is a comprehensive survey of Māori art. Twelve years in the making, extensively researched and thoughtfully written, it casts a wide inclusive net. The result is a beautifully designed visual tour de force of images both newly created and archivally sourced, and a cultural framework that approaches toi mahi with intelligence and insight. This is a book of enduring significance with international reach.

Toi Te Mana is dedicated to the late Jonathan Mane-Wheoki, one of the three authors responsible for this magnum opus. The judges congratulated Professors Deirdre Brown and Ngarino Ellis for carrying the baton to completion, a herculean task akin to the mahi of Maui himself.

General Non-Fiction Award

Hine Toa: A Story of Bravery

Published by: HarperCollins Publishers Aotearoa New Zealand

Ngāhuia Te Awekōtuku (Te Arawa, Tūhoe, Ngāpuhi, Waikato)

Hine Toa is a rich, stunningly evocative memoir that defies easy categorisation. As well as painting a vivid picture of Ngāhuia te Awekōtuku’s early life, from her childhood on 'the pā' at Ōhinemutu to her many creative and academic achievements, it is also a fiery social and political history that chronicles the transformative second half of the 20th century in Aotearoa from a vital queer, Māori, feminist perspective. From its extraordinary opening sentence, it weaves Māori and English storytelling traditions: “Once upon a time there was a pet tuatara named Kiriwhetū; her reptile skin was marked with stars.” Hine Toa is both a personal testimony and a taonga, and it was a clear winner for the judges.

Mātātuhi Foundation Best First Book Awards

Hubert Church Prize for Fiction

Poorhara

Published by: Te Herenga Waka University Press

Michelle Rahurahu (Ngāti Rahurahu, Ngāti Tahu–Ngāti Whaoa)

Poorhara is a road trip novel unlike any other. Two cousins, Erin and Star, pile into a 1994 Daihatsu Mira in a desperate bid to escape the suffocation of racism and poverty, the rigid expectations of whānau, and the trajectory of their own pasts. The judges were impressed by the urgency of Michelle Rahurahu's tragi-comic crises and the clarity of her depiction of colonialism, a presence in the book as incessant and rotten as Star’s relentless toothache.

Jessie Mackay Prize for Poetry

Manuali'i

Published by: Saufo'i Press

Rex Letoa Paget

This debut collection from Rex Letoa Paget convinces through an incantatory lyricism and chant-like rhythms that surge like ocean waves. Manuali'i ensnares and uplifts; it carries us with it through its propulsive lyrical momentum.There's a freshness and an optimism to the poems which work as semi-parables about self-growth and self-realisation: they are celebratory or elegiac bricolages, each a melange of urban realism and Pasifika mysticism. With its flow and flux, its tonal patterns and subtle imagery, Manuali'i delivers a powerful new voice.

Judith Binney Prize for Illustrated Non-Fiction

Sight Lines: Women and Art in Aotearoa

Published by: Auckland University Press

Kirsty Baker

An academic tome on the expansiveness and diversity of women’s art practice in Aotearoa, Sight Lines is derived from author Kirsty Baker’s doctoral thesis, and complemented with essays from eight other contributors. The book traverses many artforms and does a stellar job providing a vista through New Zealand art history across time, space and place. Liberally illustrated, with intentional, subtle design, Sight Lines will likely become a go-to text for tertiary art history students, and a point of reference within the country’s art analysis literature.

E.H. McCormick Prize for General Non-Fiction

The Chthonic Cycle

Published by: Te Herenga Waka University Press

Una Cruickshank

We are living through terrifying times – perhaps a mass extinction event – and that can be hard to think about. In this singular essay collection, Una Cruickshank uses pearls, jet, amber, coral, and other biogenic talismans to open new perspectives on climate change, humanity, and maybe even hope. The Chthonic Cycle is bold and convention-breaking, and unlike anything the judges had read before.

About the Best First Book Prizes

The Hubert Church Prize for Fiction was awarded from 1945 by PEN NZ (later the New Zealand Society of Authors), and named for the poet, novelist and critic who died in 1932.

The Jessie Mackay Prize for Poetry was awarded from 1940 by PEN NZ and named for the first locally born poet to achieve national prominence.

The Judith Binney Prize for Illustrated Non-Fiction is named for the late historian Dame Judith Binney, whose several ground-breaking books demonstrated her lifelong commitment to researching and writing about the history of New Zealand.

The E H McCormick Prize for General Non-Fiction is named for the late Eric McCormick, the eminent historian and biographer of Frances Hodgkins.