The biggest night on New Zealand’s literary calendar is here.
Damien Wilkins won the $65,000 Jann Medlicott Acorn Prize for Fiction for Delirious.
Wilkins faced travel disruptions, nearly missing the ceremony after multiple delays and detours.
Fergus Barrowman read from Delirious in Wilkins’ absence, but Wilkins was able to accept his award and give a speech.
A novelist came close to missing a career-defining moment at this year’s Ockham New Zealand Book Awards, arriving at the ceremony in the nick of time to accept the top prize after a day of travel chaos.
Wellington-based author and director of the International Institute of Modern Letters at Victoria University, Damien Wilkins, won the coveted $65,000 Jann Medlicott Acorn Prize for Fiction for Delirious on May 14.
But what should have been a routine journey to Auckland turned into a series of delays, detours, and near-misses worthy of a story in itself.
With “plenty of time” to spare when they checked in for their 1.45pm flight, Wilkins told the Herald that take-off was repeatedly delayed before the flight was cancelled.
“The earliest flight they could have put us on was a 7pm flight, which was the time of the start of the ceremony,” Wilkins said.
“I emailed the organiser of the festival saying, ‘Look, this has happened.’ And they said, ‘Okay, we can get you there, we have calculated if we really gun it through Auckland streets and you are on that flight, we can get you there just in time for the fiction award and that’ll be all right.’”
Damien Wilkins nearly missed the Ockham Awards due to travel delays out of Wellington. Photo / LK Creative
Onboard the plane, Wilkins learned that his friend and Te Herenga Waka University Press publisher, Fergus Barrowman, would read from Delirious in his absence.
“Caoimhe [McKeogh] the publicist texted me to say, ‘Fergus will read your extract ... if you can’t make it, let’s aim for that. So what are you choosing to read?’”
Wilkins recalled thinking there’d be no way he could make it to the ceremony in time, once collecting bags and navigating traffic was factored in.
“I thought I wasn’t going to get there. I thought I would just join the after party and it would have this strange thing of people coming up to me and saying, ‘Oh, you made it.’”
McKeogh told the Herald it was “surreal and awful to be sitting there in the auditorium tracking his flight and then their journey towards us, and watching time tick on”.
"Delirious is an incredible book, such a huge achievement for Damien, and we all felt miserable about the idea of him missing the ceremony that was celebrating that."
Delirious by Damien Wilkins (2024).
The obstacles continued to mount after landing in Auckland, with passengers unable to disembark from the back of the plane where Wilkins was seated.
“It was totally like being in a cartoon of some man having a dream about not getting to his appointment,” Wilkins said.
Picked up by a festival volunteer, Wilkins said they pulled some strings to get him along the motorway quickly. Yet roadworks in Waterview Tunnel led to another detour, and he began streaming the ceremony on his phone.
“A little bit before then, I guess I had become aware [I won the prize]. I thought, ‘Why are they really trying to get me there?’”
At the Aotea Centre, the ceremony’s MC, Miriama Kamo, and the band tried to keep things in order while the crowd waited for Wilkins’ belated arrival, and Barrowman read the chosen extract from Delirious.
“Fergus did a really nice job of reading the piece and in fact, he had literally just ... looked at it moments before getting up there,” Wilkins said.
Damien Wilkins is the writer and director of the International Institute of Modern Letters at Victoria University, Wellington. Photo / Ebony Lamb
“I said to Caoimhe, ‘Ask him to play it for laughs with a strong line in pathos’. So that was just my simple instruction.”
Barrowman later told the Herald the reading “happened at the last minute”, leaving him no time to get nervous.
“To be honest I’m grateful to have had that moment (sorry Damien).”
After all the stress that arose from trying to get him from Wellington to the central Auckland venue, Wilkins arrived just in time to run onstage and give his acceptance speech.
“In a funny way ... it meant that I was just concentrating on the mechanics of getting there rather than the ... emotional heft of receiving the award,” Wilkins said.
“I haven’t had the usual experience of nervous waiting for something to happen and you’re just frozen in your chair. So ... that was sort of quite good.”
McKeogh said the night quickly turned from bittersweet to joyous when Wilkins finally ran into the building to accept his prize.
“As Miriama said on the night, it was the perfect ‘romcom airport scene’ ending, with the person showing up after you’ve abandoned all hope.”
Wilkins previously won the Jann Medlicott Acorn Prize for Fiction for his first book, The Miserables (1993), when the Ockhams were known as the New Zealand Book Awards.
Tom Rose is an Auckland-based journalist who covers breaking news, specialising in lifestyle, entertainment and travel. He joined the Herald in 2023.
