Any awards shortlist is bound to both delight, surprise and infuriate - and this year's selection of finalists for the Ockham New Zealand Book Awards is no exception. Some of the most high-profile books from the longlists — including well-reviewed novels by Stephanie Johnson, Kirsten McDougall and Sue Orr, and Rebecca Macfie's biography of Helen Kelly — have been swept away. Some of our top writers were overlooked entirely on the longlists — Vincent O'Sullivan, Elizabeth Smither, C.K. Stead — and there was the usual social media outrage about the snubbing of various popular favourites.
But not all inclusions are surprises, and the shortlist of 16 — four per category — reveal plenty of good news about the quality, ambition and diversity of our local writing and publishing scene. There are some familiar names, like Anne Kennedy — a two-time previous winner —in the poetry category, and historian Vincent O'Malley in General Non-fiction with his acclaimed book Voices from the New Zealand Wars.
Alongside O'Malley sit memoirs by two of our most accomplished fiction writers, Patricia Grace and Charlotte Grimshaw. Grimshaw's The Mirror Book, exploring growing up in the literary Stead household, was one of 2021's publishing sensations, topping numerous best-of-the-year lists. "Most readers say the book has made them think about their own families and the complexity of their own experiences," Grimshaw told the Academy of New Zealand Literature in December. "To me, the most superficial and irrelevant response is to call the book 'literary gossip' and to wonder what in it is 'true.' (It's all true.)"
Grace, the first Māori woman to publish a novel and a past winner at our national book awards, will be pleased by this year's fiction shortlist. Among the novels in contention for the $60,000 Jann Medlicott Acorn Prize are two by Māori women writers, the first time in several decades that there's been more than one Māori finalist. "I was thrilled to see Alice [Tawhai] and Rebecca [K. Reilly] on the longlist," says Whiti Hereaka, an accomplished YA writer whose stunning myth-subverting novel, Kurangaituku, is a finalist alongside Reilly. "I think it bodes well for the Māori literary community that these novels — which are so different from one another — have been recognised.