2025 Ockham New Zealand Book Awards

Long Lists for Fiction, Non-Fiction, Illustrated Non-Fiction and Poetry

"Unforgettable and amusing memoirs, novels that move and unnerve, illustrated books that powerfully illuminate the past and present, and sizzling, considered poetry collections are among the 43 books longlisted from 175 entries." -- New Zealand Book Awards Trust

Updated February 4, 2025
K
Kōtui New Plymouth Libraries
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Edith Collier: Early New Zealand Modernist
Paper Book
Published to coincide with the reopening of the Sarjeant Gallery in Whanganui, this substantial and handsome book examines the continuing impact of Whanganui-born and British-trained Edith Collier and her artistic legacy. In an era of growing international interest in women artists, Collier's work...
Sam the Trap Man: Cracking yarns and tall tales from the bush
Gibson, Sam.
Paper Book
With cracking yarns, hilarious tales and writing to rival Barry Crump, Sam Gibson is a modern outdoorsman with an incredible life story to tell.
Force of nature = Te Aumangea O Te Ao Turoa : a conservation history of Forest & Bird 1923-2023
Young, David
Paper Book
Kataraina
Manawatu, Becky
Paper Book
In Aue eight-year-old Arama was taken by his brother, Taukiri, to live with Kat and Stu at the farm in Kaikoura, setting in train the tragedy that unfolded. Arama's aunty Kat was at the centre of events, but silenced by abuse her voice was absent from the story. In Kataraina, Kat and her whanau take...
Golden enterprise : New Zealand Chinese merchants, 1860s-1970s = Rong guang ji ye : Xinxilan hua shang bai nian chuan qi
Li, Phoebe H.
Paper Book
"Cantonese merchants facilitated early Chinese immigration to New Zealand and their social and business networks laid the foundation of the Chinese community in the South Pacific. They played a major role in the making of Chinese New Zealanders, against the background of New Zealands changing...
Leslie Adkin : farmer photographer
McCredie, Athol.
Paper Book
A SUPERB SELECTION OF THE WORK OF ONE OF NEW ZEALAND'S FINEST EARLY PHOTOGRAPHERS Leslie Adkin (1888-1964) was a Levin farmer, photographer, geologist, ethnologist and explorer, a gifted amateur and renaissance man, of sorts, who used photography to document his scholarly interests, farming...
A different light : first photographs of Aotearoa
Hammond, Catherine
Paper Book
The mihini miharo reveals nineteenth-century Aotearoa as never before.
Sight lines: women and art in Aotearoa / Kirsty Baker
Paper Book
From ancient whatu kakahu to contemporary installation art, Frances Hodgkins to Merata Mita, Fiona Clark to Mataaho Collective, Sight Lines tells the story of art made by women in Aotearoa. Gathered here are painters, photographers, performers, sculptors, weavers, textile artists, poets and...
Te ata o T? : the shadow of T?matauenga : the New Zealand Wars Collections of Te Papa
Baker, Matiu
Paper Book
The New Zealand Wars of 1845-72 were a series of bitter and bloody conflicts between Maori and Pakeha that extended from Wairau to the Bay of Islands, and from Taranaki to the East Cape. They are as important to New Zealand as the civil wars were to England and to the United States. Land and...
Toi te Mana : a history of M?ori art
Brown, Oeidre.
Paper Book
He toi whakairo, he mana tangata.Through artistic excellence, there is human dignity. Toi Te Mana is a landmark account of Maori art from the time of the tupuna (ancestors) to the present day. In 600 pages and over 500 extraordinary images, this volume invites readers to climb on to the waka for a...
Bad Archive
Paper Book
Bold, beautiful and constantly surprising essays about life, loss, joy and the fabric of memory. In this deftly woven work Flora Feltham explores the corners where her memories are stashed: the archive vault, her mother's house, a marriage counsellor's office, the tip and New World. She takes us on...
A history of us
Belgrave, Michael
Paper Book
In the first major national history of Aotearoa New Zealand to be published for 20 years, Professor Michael Belgrave advances the notion that New Zealand's two peoples - tangata whenua and subsequent migrants - have together built an open, liberal society based on a series of social contracts....
Feijoa : a story of obsession & belonging
Evans, Kate (Journalist)
Paper Book
'Read this book - the micro-history you didn't know you needed, even if you don't like feijoa!' Liv Sisson, author of Fungi Inspired by a personal obsession with this singular exotic fruit, Feijoa is a sweeping, global tale about the dance between people and plants -...
Hard by the Cloud House
Walker, Peter.
Paper Book
An eagle, and its place in our history. The legend of Pouakai, aka the extinct Haast's Eagle, takes Peter Walker on a journey from an 1860s Canterbury sheep run to a deep cave near Karamea as he learns the story of the mighty hunter that inhabited a peak in the foothills of the Southern Alps. Was it...
Hine toa : a story of bravery
Te Awekotuku, Ngahuia
Paper Book
An incredible memoir by a trailblazing voice in women's, queer and Maori liberation movements 'Remarkable. At once heartbreaking and triumphant' Patricia Grace In the 1950s, a young Ngahuia is fostered by a family who believe in hard work and community. Although close...
Kahurangi : the nature of Kahurangi National Park and northwest Nelson
Hansford, Dave (Science and environmental writer)
Paper Book
Unreel: A memoir
Wichtel, Diana.
Paper Book
Born to a Polish Holocaust survivor father and a 1950s Kiwi tradwife too busy to police her viewing, Diana Wichtel cut her teeth on the Golden Age of television. But in the 1960s, things fell apart. Diana's fractured family left Canada and blew in to New Zealand, just missing the...
The beautiful afternoon
Beautrais, Airini
Paper Book
In The Beautiful Afternoon, award-winning poet and short-story writer Airini Beautrais plumbs history, literature, Star Wars, sea hags, beauty products, tarot, swimwear, environmentalism and pole dancing to deliver a virtuoso inquiry into how we become, and change, who we are. Beautrais surveys the...
Chthonic Cycle
Cruickshank, Una.
Paper Book
Written in an effort to ward off existential dread, and to find new understandings and consolations for those similarly afflicted, The Chthonic Cycle is an eccentric and brilliantly curated tour through time, in which fascinating objects glint and spark and the transience of humanity flickers. At...
The invasion of Waikato
O'Malley, Vincent
Paper Book
"The Waikato War is a pivotal event in the history of Aotearoa ... Vincent OMalley explains the enduring impact of these conflicts, continuing his remarkable work on the New Zealand Wars. The book begins with the 1863 crossing of the Mangatwhiri River by British troops. This act marked the Crowns...
The Mermaid Chronicles: A midlife mer-moir
Dunn, Megan.
Paper Book
Forty, freckled and facing infertility, Megan Dunn hears the siren call that reawakens her lifelong obsession, and sets off in pursuit of mermaids. Real mermaids. From Coney Island and Copenhagen to Courtenay Place, Wellington, New Zealand, from the semiotics of 1984 romantic comedy...
The Twisted Chain
Gurney, Jason.
Paper Book
Not knowing if your dad will live through the night is not something that any young son or daughter should ever have to endure. I experienced this nightmare more times than I care to remember.' In the winter of 1969, a 14-year-old Whangarei schoolboy called Keg went to a weekend rugby tournament and...
The unsettled : small stories of colonisation
Shaw, Richard
Paper Book
WHAT IT MEANS TO OWN YOUR PASTAfter Richard Shaw published his acclaimed memoir The Forgotten Coast in 2021, he made contact with Pakeha with long settler histories who were coming to grips with the truth of their respective families' 'pioneer stories'. They were questioning the foundation of...
At The Grand Glacier Hotel
Fearnley, Laurence.
Paper Book
Following a disastrous family holiday, Libby and Curtis make a promise- If they ever visit the West Coast of the South Island again, it will be to stay at the majestic Grand Glacier Hotel. Twenty years later, Libby is recovering from cancer and the couple finally return to the resort....
All That We Know
Kino, Shilo.
Paper Book
This is Aotearoa, New Zealand. This is a novel about who we are now. Past, present and future. All that we have is All That We Know. Meet Māreikura Pohe: she's in love...
Amma
De Silva, Saraid
Paper Book
Ash
Wallace, Louise.
Paper Book
Thea lives under a mountain - one that's ready to blow. A vet at a mid-sized rural practice has been called back during maternity leave and is coping - just - with the juggle of meetings, mealtimes, farm visits, her boss's search for legal loopholes and the constant care of her much-loved children,...
Delirious
Wilkins, Damien
Paper Book
It's time. Mary, an ex cop, and her husband, retired librarian Pete, have decided to move into a retirement village. They aren't falling apart, but they're watching each other - Pete with his chcychardia and bad hip, Mary with her ankle and knee. Selling their beloved house should be a clean break,...
Poorhara
Rahurahu, Michelle
Paper Book
Poorhara is the story of nineteen-year-old Erin, her older cousin Star/Whetu and an impromptu road trip taken over a few days. With the demands and heartbreaks of whanau, poverty and trauma nipping at their heels, Erin and Star trace the path back their whenua, in the hope of salvation - something...
Pretty ugly
Gunn, Kirsty
Paper Book
Pretty Ugly by Kirsty Gunn is the inaugural title in a new series of short story collections from Landfall Tauraka and Otago University Press, celebrating the art of short fiction in Aotearoa New Zealand. Contradictions, misunderstandings, oppositions, enigmas, provocations, challenges - these messy...
The Mires
Makereti, Tina.
Paper Book
A tender and fierce novel that asks what we do when faced with things we don't understand. Is our impulse to destroy or connect? Water will come and you think it will be soft. You think it will be smooth and find its way around your things: your houses and cars...
The Royal Free
Shuker, Carl.
Paper Book
Equal parts workplace comedy, home invasion thriller and literary conundrum, The Royal Free is an exuberant, dark, wildly entertaining novel about death and copy editing - by the author of the acclaimed A Mistake. James Ballard is a recently bereaved single father to a baby daughter, and a medical...
Fox Spirit on a Distant Cloud
Murray, Lee.
Paper Book
"Wellington, 1923, and a sixty-year-old woman hangs herself in a scullery; ten years later another woman falls from the second floor of a Taranaki tobacconist; soon afterwards a young mother in Taumarunui slices the throat of her newborn with a cleaver. All are women of the Chinese diaspora, who...
Hopurangi
Sullivan, Robert.
Paper Book
After rejoining social media, Robert Sullivan wrote and posted a poem a day over two and a half months - the poems collected in Hopurangi-Songcatcher. Inspired by the cyclical energies of the Maramataka, these poems see the poet re-finding himself and his world - in the matauranga of his kuia from...
In the Half Light of a Dying Day
Paper Book
An old friend, a new character - C. K. Stead is scribe to love and grief in this beautiful new collection. In two sequences the poet plays with the lines of history and love, the fictional and the autobiographical. Reflecting on a long career and familiar faces, the first sequence walks the reader...
LIAR, LIAR, LICK, SPIT
Neale, Emma.
Paper Book
Fibs, porkies, little white lies, absolute whoppers and criminal evasions: the ways we can deceive each other are legion. Liar, Liar, Lick, Spit, the new collection by Otepoti poet and writer Emma Neale, is fascinated by our doubleness. Prompted by the rich implications in a line from Joseph Brodsky...
Slender volumes
Von Sturmer, Richard
Paper Book
Slim volume
Brown, James
Paper Book
A slim volume of verse, like a bicycle, offers us fresh and joyful and sometimes troubling ways of seeing the world. James Brown's eighth collection of poems begins in childhood and moves through education, jobs and the essential unremarkable activities that occupy our lives - before arriving in a...
The girls in the red house are singing
Slaughter, Tracey
Paper Book
Tracey Slaughter's powerful new collection of poems begins with the sequence that won the GBP10,000 Manchester Poetry Prize in 2023, opioid sonatas, which travels the jagged aftermath of a high-speed crash, charting the fallout of grief and the body's long-term struggles with dosage and damage. The...
Slanted
Glenny, Alison.
Paper Book
Hibiscus Tart
Smeaton, Carin.
Paper Book
Manuali'i
Paget, Rex Letoa
Paper Book
"Manualii - Bird of the Gods - is an anchor to ancestors and to self. These poems are reminders of who you come from and who you are; compasses to constant new becomings. Questions for timekeepers and connections to universal powers. Being guided by messengers of the sky. Dancing on the delicate...

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