News
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Ockham New Zealand Books Awards – Tranche #1 submissions open
14-08-2024
The 2025 awards are now open for entries for books published between 1 January 2024 and 31 August 2024. Entries close at 5pm on Wednesday 11 September 2024. Books published from 1 September – 31 December 2024 can be entered in tranche 2. For more information and the entry form, go here.
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Prague UNESCO City of Literature Residency 2025 – applications open
22-07-2024
Do you have a breathtaking project you would like to work on during your residency in Prague? Prague City of Literature offers an opportunity to writers and translators to live and work in the beautiful city centre where historical architecture meets modern and vibrant city life. This call goes for eight two-month residencies in 2025 which will be held in:
- January–February
- March–April
- May–June
- July–August
- September – October
- November – 15th December
The applicants can send their materials via the online application form . The general terms and conditions can be found here . The call for applications closes August 20, 2024, 11.59 pm CET . Results will be announced on October 31, 2024.
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Mātātuhi Foundation New Criteria, New Funding
16-07-2024
Could your project be the perfect match for our literary grant funding? Mātātuhi Foundation is excited to announce that grant applicants can now apply for up to $20,000 in funding in our October funding round, which closes on 31 October 2024. In previous years, the maximum grant per project was $5,000.
Since its launch in 2018, the Mātātuhi Foundation has funded close to 60 projects and awarded more than $360,000 of grant monies to the literary sector. Skill building, digital resource development, facilitating youth access to NZ books and authors, celebrating excellence in writing along with preservation of NZ legacy texts have been just some of the projects that we have proudly supported.
Highlights Summary:
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Our latest funding round is now OPEN and closes on 31 October 2024
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Applications for up to $20,000 in funding will be accepted
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All applications must meet one or more of the new priority areas – Sustainable Platform for NZ literature, NZ Children’s Literature, NZ Literary Legacy
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We will accept applications from past recipients
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Project leads must have a strong track record in execution and delivering measurable outcomes
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All applications must be submitted via our online form
All applications should be via our online form. For more information on applications, funding successes and criteria, please visit our website or contact us by email on info@matatuhifoundation.co.nz.
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Michael King Writers’ Centre 2025 Writers in Residence – Apply Now!
01-07-2024
The Michael King Writers Centre is pleased to announce that next year’s programme of residencies at the historic Signalman’s House on Takarunga Mt Victoria in Devonport, Auckland, is now open for applications. Writers awarded a residency can look forward to peaceful accommodation, the use of a writing studio, a supporting stipend and the opportunity to focus on a specific writing project.
The 2025 programme offers 16 residencies to emerging and established writers for periods of two to four weeks. Awarded residencies will include up to four specifically for Māori or Pasifika writers.
Applications open Thursday 27 June and close Monday 29 July. For the application form and more details see here
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NZSA Peter & Dianne Beatson Fellowship – applications open
14-06-2024
The Peter and Dianne Beatson Fellowship is awarded each year to a mid-career or senior writer to work on a project that shows a high level of literary merit and national significance and is donated by Peter Beatson. Open to writers of fiction, non-fiction, poetry and drama who are currently working on a new project. The annual award of $10,000 is open from 14 June to 20 August 2024.
Applicants must be members of the NZ Society of Authors. More information below, or email the national office.
Peter & Dianne Beatson Fellowship information
Peter & Dianne Beatson Fellowship Application form (application form will be active from 14 June 2024)
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Call for Ockhams 2025 Judges
06-06-2024
It may be one of the most rewarding reading jobs in the country: judging the annual Ockham New Zealand Book Awards. And with this year’s award ceremony barely behind us, the New Zealand Book Awards Trust is already calling for expressions of interest in being one of 12 judges of the 2025 awards.
Suitable judges need a deep knowledge of New Zealand literature, which is why applications are welcomed from the literature community and from members of the public with relevant experience. Writers, former publishers, editors, festival organisers, academics, curators, teachers, reviewers, critics, booksellers and librarians all have the expertise they are looking for.
If you think you fit the bill, or know someone who does, more information and expressions of interest forms can be downloaded from their website or supplied on request by emailing the Trust manager. Applications close at 5pm on Thursday 27 June.
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Ockham New Zealand Book Awards 2024 Winners Announced
16-05-2024
Congratulations to all the writers who made it through to last night’s prizegiving, and to those who won the final prize categories, in particular ANZL members Emily Perkins and Gregory O’Brien.
Internationally acclaimed New Zealand writer Emily Perkins MNZM has won the $65,000 Jann Medlicott Acorn Prize for Fiction at the 2024 Ockham New Zealand Book Awards for Lioness – a smart, multi-layered, laugh-out-loud novel exploring wealth, class and female mid-life reckoning. Ms Perkins received the award ahead of Booker-Prize winning author and screenwriter Eleanor Catton (Birnam Wood); and Pip Adam (Audition) and Stephen Daisley (A Better Place) – both previous winners of the Acorn Prize for Fiction. Published by Bloomsbury UK, Wellington resident Emily Perkins last won New Zealand’s top fiction prize in 2009 with Novel About My Wife.
Writer, poet, artist and curator Gregory O’Brien MNZM has won the Booksellers Aotearoa New Zealand Award for Illustrated Non-Fiction for Don Binney: Flight Path (Auckland University Press). Category convenor Lynn Freeman says even as an experienced biographer, Gregory O’Brien has achieved a near impossible task in Don Binney: Flight Path. “He has encapsulated the artist’s full life, honestly portraying his often contrary personality, and carefully interrogating a formidably large body of work and its place in Aotearoa New Zealand’s art history.
New Zealand Book Awards Trust Te Ohu Tiaki i Te Rau Hiringa chair Nicola Legat saysthis year’s winners fully demonstrate the relevance of books to the issues of our times.
“Drawn from an extraordinary group of shortlisted titles in a very competitive year, all these books truly deserve the honours bestowed on them. They are by turns witty, timely, insightful, searing, scholarly, political and loving. They have each, in their own way, moved the dial. The Trust congratulates the publishers of these impressive and beautifully produced titles,” she says.
The Ockham New Zealand Book Awards are supported by Ockham Residential, Creative New Zealand, the late Jann Medlicott and the Acorn Foundation, Mary and Peter Biggs CNZM, Booksellers Aotearoa New Zealand, the Mātātuhi Foundation, and the Auckland Writers Festival.
The awards ceremony was hosted at the Kiri Te Kanawa Theatre in Aotea Centre, as part of the 2024 Auckland Writers Festival programme.
To find out more about the winners’ titles follow this link.
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The Arts Foundation 2024 Katherine Mansfield Menton Fellowship – applications open
29-04-2024
For over fifty years, since 1970, the Katherine Mansfield Menton Fellowship has allowed an established New Zealand writer to live and write for three months or more in Menton in southern France. There, they have access to the writing room in Villa Isola Bella where Katherine Mansfield once lived and worked. The residency is open to creative writers across all genres including fiction, children’s fiction, poetry, creative non-fiction and playwriting. The successful applicant will become an Arts Foundation Laureate. Previous recipients include Charlotte Grimshaw, Paula Morris, Carl Nixon, Kate Camp, Anna Jackson, Mandy Hager, Greg McGee, Justin Paton, Chris Price, Ken Duncum, Damien Wilkins, Jenny Pattrick, Stuart Hoar, Dame Fiona Kidman, Ian Wedde and other prestigious writers such as Bill Manhire, Janet Frame, Witi Ihimaera, Elizabeth Knox, Lloyd Jones, Roger Hall, Marilyn Duckworth, Michael King and Allen Curnow. Applications for the Fellowship are open until 14th June 2024.
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Sargeson Short Story Prize 2024 – open for entries
12-04-2024
First offered in 2019, the Sargeson Prize is New Zealand’s richest short story prize, sponsored by the University of Waikato. Named for celebrated New Zealand writer Frank Sargeson, the Prize was conceived by writer Catherine Chidgey, who also lectures in Writing Studies at the University.
The Open Division is open to New Zealand citizens or permanent residents aged 16 and over who are writing in English. Published and unpublished writers are welcome to enter. Entries must be single stories of no more than 5000 words. They must be original, unpublished pieces of work. First Prize: $10,000, Second Prize: $1,000, Third Prize: $500.
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It’s time to register for Phantom Billstickers National Poetry Day 2024!
28-03-2024
Mark your calendars! The date for this year’s nationwide celebration of poetry is scheduled for Friday 23 August. Registrations and seed funding applications are now open, and event organisers across the motu are encouraged to get involved and celebrate Aotearoa’s growing and vibrant poetry scene. In its 27th year, Phantom Billstickers National Poetry Day has established itself as a prominent and popular event in the literary calendar that promises an explosion of poetry countrywide in late August.
Registration forms, templates, planning and marketing resources are all available on the NPD website. Don’t miss out on the opportunity to showcase your love for poetry and engage with your community in a meaningful way. Join us in making Phantom Billstickers National Poetry Day 2024 a memorable and successful celebration of creativity and expression.
Applications for seed funding close at 5pm on 4 June 2024. The official Phantom Billstickers National Poetry Day 2024 calendar will be announced on 1 August. For further information contact NPD national coordinator Gill Hughes at poetryday@nzbookawards.org.nz and to keep up with plans for NPD 2024, follow NZPoetryDay on Facebook, Instagram and X (formerly Twitter).
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Island to Island: Aotearoa to Scotland Writers Residency Exchange – Applications open!
27-03-2024
Verb Wellington (Te Whanganui-a-tara, Aotearoa New Zealand) and Moniack Mhor (Highlands, Scotland) are partnering to create a residency exchange in 2024. The purpose is to offer writers paid time to explore a new geography, a fresh environment to inspire their creative work; and to strengthen the relationship between our respective literatures and acknowledge the close ties that both countries have both historically and in a contemporary context. A writer from Aotearoa will travel to Scotland to spend time at @moniackmhor and on the stunning island of Skye; then later in the year and a writer from Scotland will travel to NZ to spend time in Te Whanganui-a-Tara and on Kāpiti Island.
Applications for both the Scottish and Aotearoa writer are open now via this link.Applications for the 2024 residency exchange will close on Monday 8 April at 12:00pm. -
UK: An evening with poet David Howard
12-03-2024
Istros Books and the British Croatian Society present an evening with NZ poet David Howard. The inspiration behind David’s cycle of poems ‘Mate’, is the history of Dalmatian immigrants to NZ in the early 20th century, who were mostly employed digging kauri gum for the roads in the North Island. Many of them ended up marrying Maori women and the name given to them, and their descendants, is ‘Tarara”. Howard wrote the poetic cycle ‘Mate’ based on this subject following on from a residency at the Writers House in Pazin, Croatia (where he now lives). Howard will read from ‘Mate’ and tell of the early Dalmatian immigrants to New Zealand with Māori links which inspired his work.
Thursday, April 18 · 6:30 – 9pm GMT+1, Kinnaird House 1 Pall Mall East London SW1Y 5AU
For more information see here.
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Literary heavyweights vie for top fiction prize in Ockham NZ Book Awards
06-03-2024
Booker Prize-winning author Eleanor Catton faces off against critically acclaimed former national award winners Emily Perkins, Pip Adam and Stephen Daisley for the $65,000 Jann Medlicott Acorn Prize for Fiction, as finalists in the 2024 Ockham New Zealand Book Awards announced today. The four novelists are joined by a further 12 acclaimed and debut finalist authors of memoir, poetry, history, art, and te ao Māori in one of the country’s strongest-ever years for book publishing.The 16 finalists were selected from a longlist of 44 books by panels of specialist judges across four categories: fiction, poetry, illustrated non-fiction, and general non-fiction.
Nicola Legat, spokesperson for the New Zealand Book Awards Trust Te Ohu Tiaki i Te Rau Hiringa, says that this year’s shortlist holds worlds of riches for all readers.
“There is a dazzling variety of outstanding writing including powerful personal stories, punchy and revealing poetry, and fresh reflections on contemporary issues. The fiction shortlist is one of the strongest in the award’s history. It’s remarkable that all four finalists are previous winners. In every category, each finalist title is ambitious in scope and offers vivid reflections on Aotearoa’s past, present and future.” Each finalist title is ambitious in scope and offers vivid reflections on Aotearoa’s past, present, and future.
“In these finalist books we can also see publishers at the tops of their games. There are 11 publishers shortlisted across 16 titles. What a knockout year,” she says.
The 2024 Ockham New Zealand Book Awards shortlisted titles are:
*represents debut authors
Jann Medlicott Acorn Prize for Fiction
A Better Place by Stephen Daisley (Text Publishing)
Audition by Pip Adam (Te Herenga Waka University Press)
Birnam Wood by Eleanor Catton (Te Herenga Waka University Press)
Lioness by Emily Perkins (Bloomsbury)
Mary and Peter Biggs Award for Poetry
At the Point of Seeing by Megan Kitching (Otago University Press) *
Chinese Fish by Grace Yee (Giramondo Publishing) *
Root Leaf Flower Fruit by Bill Nelson (Te Herenga Waka University Press)
Talia by Isla Huia (Te Āti Haunui a-Pāpārangi, Uenuku) (Dead Bird Books) *
Booksellers Aotearoa New Zealand Award for Illustrated Non-Fiction
Don Binney: Flight Path by Gregory O’Brien (Auckland University Press)
Fungi of Aotearoa: A Curious Forager’s Field Guide by Liv Sisson (Penguin, Penguin Random House)*
Marilynn Webb: Folded in the Hills by Lauren Gutsell, Lucy Hammonds, Bridget Reweti (Ngāti Ranginui, Ngāi Te Rangi) (Dunedin Public Art Gallery)
Rugby League in New Zealand: A People’s History by Ryan Bodman (Bridget Williams Books)*
General Non-Fiction Award
An Indigenous Ocean: Pacific Essays by Damon Salesa (Bridget Williams Books)
Laughing at the Dark: A Memoir by Barbara Else (Penguin, Penguin Random House)
Ngātokimatawhaorua: The Biography of a Waka by Jeff Evans (Massey University Press)
There’s a Cure for This by Emma Espiner (Ngāti Tukorehe, Ngāti Porou) (Penguin, Penguin Random House) *
The 2024 Ockham New Zealand Book Awards’ winners, including the four Mātātuhi Foundation Best First Book Awards recipients, will be announced at a public ceremony on 15 May during the 2024 Auckland Writers Festival.
The winner of the Jann Medlicott Acorn Prize for Fiction will receive $65,000 and each of the three other main category winners will receive $12,000. Each of the Best First Book winners, for fiction, poetry, general non-fiction and illustrated non-fiction, will be awarded $3000.
The Ockham New Zealand Book Awards are supported by Ockham Residential, Creative New Zealand, the late Jann Medlicott and the Acorn Foundation, Mary and Peter Biggs CNZM, Booksellers Aotearoa New Zealand, the Mātātuhi Foundation, and the Auckland Writers Festival.
To find out more about the shortlisted titles go to https://www.nzbookawards.nz/new-zealand-book-awards/2024-awards/shortlist/
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Ockham New Zealand Book Awards 2024 – long list announced
01-02-2024
Congratulations to ALL the 2024 Ockham New Zealand Book Awards longlisters, in particular ANZL members with the following titles:FICTIONA Better Place by Stephen Daisley (Text Publishing)Audition by Pip Adam (Te Herenga Waka University Press)Bird Life by Anna Smaill (Te Herenga Waka University Press)Birnam Wood by Eleanor Catton (Te Herenga Waka University Press)Lioness by Emily Perkins (Bloomsbury Publishing UK)Pet by Catherine Chidgey (Te Herenga Waka University Press)POETRYBig Fat Brown Bitch by Tusiata Avia (Te Herenga Waka University Press)Say I Do This: Poems 2018–2022 by C.K. Stead (Auckland University Press)ILLUSTRATED NON FICTIONDon Binney: Flight Path by Gregory O’Brien (Auckland University Press)GENERAL NON FICTIONLaughing at the Dark: A Memoir by Barbara Else (Penguin Books NZ)To find out more about the longlisted titles go to: https://www.nzbookawards.nz/new…/2024-awards/longlist/ -
2023 Landfall Essay Prize: winner announced
28-11-2023
Congratulations to ANZL member Siobhan Harvey whose essay ‘A Jigsaw of Broken Things’ has won this year’s Landfall Essay Prize. In her judge’s report, Landfall editor Lynley Edmeades writes that Harvey’s essay is a ‘beautifully crafted and timely comment on prejudice against the LGBTQIA+ community… Powerful and unflinching, Harvey uses her memories like stepping stones as she examines the violence and prejudices that repress queer communities worldwide.’ Siobhan’s winning essay, ‘A Jigsaw of Broken Things,’ and the full judge’s report are published in Landfall 246: Spring 2023, edited by Lynley Edmeades. You can read an extract from Siobhan’s winning essay ‘A Jigsaw of Broken Things’ on Kete Books. Click here to read.
'There’s a kind of heaven that comes from hearing another writer interpret the mysteries of process' - Tracey Slaughter