Dame Jacinda Ardern has pledged to donate her winnings to Read New Zealand Te Pou Muramura. Photo / Getty Images
Dame Jacinda Ardern has pledged to donate her winnings to Read New Zealand Te Pou Muramura. Photo / Getty Images
Dame Jacinda Ardern will donate the $3000 prizemoney from her win at tonight’s Ockham New Zealand Book Awards to a literacy charity.
Her best-selling memoir, A Different Kind of Power, won the E.H. McCormick Prize for General Non-Fiction, which is for the best first book of general non-fiction.
She had been in line for the $3000 best first book prize as the only eligible debut author on the General Non-Fiction shortlist.
The Ockham Awards said in a statement the former Prime Minister did not attend the Auckland ceremony, but her sister Louise Ardern accepted the award on her behalf.
“Jacinda is not intending to take any prize money in the event of her winning any award. She would like to donate any cash award to Read New Zealand Te Pou Muramura.”
The charity delivers reading and writing programmes in schools and communities across the country.
“I hope this memoir felt as much a New Zealand story as it was my story,” Louise Ardern read on her sister’s behalf.
“If its existence in the world means that just one reader goes on to pick up the baton of leadership or politics, then it would have all been worth it.”
Ardern’s memoir had been shortlisted for the main 2026 General Non-Fiction award, which was won by Tina Makereti’s This Compulsion in Us. The other finalists were Peta Carey’s The Hollows Boys: A Story of Three Brothers & the Fiordland Deer Recovery Eraand Naomi Arnold’s Northbound: Four Seasons of Solitude on Te Araroa.
Dame Jacinda Ardern's memoir A Different Kind of Power won the Best First Book General Non-Fiction Award.
The General Non-Fiction category judges said good political memoirs and biographies were rare in New Zealand, but Ardern’s A Different Kind of Power was “exceptional”.
“A singular figure with both national and global appeal, her time in office was marked by several catastrophic events, including the country’s worst terror attack, the deadly White Island eruption, and the defining pandemic,” the judges said.
“Ardern’s thoughtful and rewarding account sheds important light on those years, and on a Kiwi childhood that somehow inadvertently prepared her for the rigours of leadership.”
In his ReadingRoom newsletter, journalist Steve Braunias said he had received confirmation from the book award organisers that Ardern had prior commitments.
“Regrettably, Dame Jacinda Ardern is unable to attend the Ockham New Zealand Book Awards ceremony due to her attending an event in Australia about the release of her guide for teens, titled What If You Could, which was confirmed prior to A Different Kind of Power’s Ockham’s shortlisting.”
The 45-year-old was scheduled to appear at the Melbourne Writers Festival over the weekend, where she was promoting A Different Kind of Power.
She will also be at the Auckland Writers Festival as a guest speaker on Sunday.
