Ockham New Zealand Book Awards finalists revealed
Jacinda Ardern is up for a prize for her memoir, while author Catherine Chidgey could be the first person to win three prizes for fiction in the Ockhams.
Former New Zealand Prime Minister Dame Jacinda Ardern’s book, A Different Kind of Power, has made the shortlist of the 2026 Ockham New Zealand Book Awards.
Ardern’s memoir is one of four finalists announced on Wednesday in the awards’ general non-fiction category.
The Ockham Awards shortlist includes writers across fiction, poetry, history, botany, art and te ao Māori.
Natural history writer Naomi Arnold is a finalist for her book, Northbound: Four Seasons of Solitude on Te Araroa.
Naomi Arnold
Ardern is up against journalist and natural history writer Naomi Arnold’s Northbound: Four Seasons of Solitude on Te Araroa; TV producer/director, documentary maker and writer Peta Carey’s The Hollows Boys: A Story of Three Brothers & the Fiordland Deer Recovery Era; and This Compulsion in Us by novelist, essayist, short story writer and creative writing teacher Tina Makereti (Te Ātiawa, Ngāti Tūwharetoa, Ngāti Rangatahi-Matakore, Pākehā).
Catherine Chidgey is the first writer to be up for her third Jann Medlicott Acorn Prize for Fiction with this year's entry,The Book of Guilt. Chidgey won in 2017 for The Wish Child and in 2023 with The Axeman’s Carnival.
The winner of the Jann Medlicott Acorn Prize for Fiction will receive $65,000 and each of the other main category winners will receive $12,000. Each of The Mātātuhi Foundation Best First Book winners (for fiction, poetry, general non-fiction and illustrated non-fiction) will be awarded $3000.
The winners will be announced 13 May at the Auckland Writers Festival.
Catherine Chidgey and her book, The Book of Guilt.
Ebony Lamb/Te Herenga Waka University Press
Ockham New Zealand Book Awards 2026 finalist
Jann Medlicott Acorn Prize for Fiction
All Her Lives by Ingrid Horrocks
Hoods Landing by Laura Vincent (Ngāti Māhanga, Ngāpuhi)
How to Paint a Nude by Sam Mahon
The Book of Guilt by Catherine Chidgey
Mary and Peter Biggs Award for Poetry
Black Sugarcane by Nafanua Purcell Kersel (Satupa‘itea, Faleālupo, Aleipata, Tuaefu)
No Good by Sophie van Waardenberg
Sick Power Trip by Erik Kennedy
Terrier, Worrier: A Poem in Five Parts by Anna Jackson
BookHub Award for Illustrated Non-Fiction
Garrison World: Redcoat Soldiers in New Zealand and Across the British Empire by Charlotte Macdonald
He Puāwai: A Natural History of New Zealand Flowers by Philip Garnock-Jones
Mark Adams: A Survey – He Kohinga Whakaahua by Sarah Farrar
Mr Ward's Map: Victorian Wellington Street by Street by Elizabeth Cox
General Non-Fiction Award
A Different Kind of Power by Jacinda Ardern
Northbound: Four Seasons of Solitude on Te Araroa by Naomi Arnold
The Hollows Boys: A Story of Three Brothers & the Fiordland Deer Recovery Era by Peta Carey
This Compulsion in Us by Tina Makereti (Te Ātiawa, Ngāti Tūwharetoa, Ngāti Rangatahi-Matakore, Pākehā)
