Ockham Book Awards winners: Whiti Hereaka with Kurangaituku, as well as Vincent O'Malley, Claire Regnault, Joanna Preston

Wellington writer Whiti Hereaka has won the $60,000 Jann Medlicott Acorn Prize for Fiction at the Ockham New Zealand Book Awards for her "audacious" novel Kurangaituku.

The awards ceremony, emceed by Jack Tame, took place at Auckland's Q Theatre tonight. Smaller publishers dominated the awards this year, with the major prizes going to books produced by Huia, Te Papa Press, Bridget Williams Books and Otago University Press.

Hereaka (Ngāti Tūwharetoa, Te Arawa) is a playwright and writer of Young Adult novels. Kurangaituku, published by Huia, reimagines the Te Arawa story of Hatupatu and the Birdwoman from the perspective of the "monstrous" Birdwoman. Hereaka spent nearly 10 years writing the book, which is divided into halves and can be read starting at the front cover or the back cover.

Kurangaituku reimagines the Te Arawa story of Hatupatu and the Birdwoman from the perspective of the "monstrous" Birdwoman.

"I was secretly hoping for a work that was audacious and broke the mould and that's exactly what we got with Kurangaituku," said Rob Kidd, convener of the fiction judging panel, who praised the exceptional quality of all fiction finalists.

"We had some really robust conversations as judges. With Kurangaituku we all had such varied ideas of what we saw in it and loved about it. It really exceeded all expectations. Our international judge [editor and writer] John Freeman said it was like nothing he had ever read before. He was hugely impressed, as we all were."

The other finalists in the fiction category were Rebecca K Reilly for Greta & Valdin – which won the Hubert Church Prize for best first book of fiction – Bryan Walpert for Entanglement and Gigi Fenster for A Good Winter.

Historian Vincent O'Malley won the general non-fiction category for his book Voices from the New Zealand Wars / He Reo nō ngā Pakanga o Aotearoa (Bridget Williams Books), ahead of two high-profile memoirs – From the Centre by Patricia Grace and The Mirror Book by Charlotte Grimshaw – and The Alarmist: Fifty Years Measuring Climate Change by Dave Lowe, which won the EH McCormick Prize for best first work of general non-fiction.

New Zealand Book Awards Trust spokesperson Paula Morris described general non-fiction as a "really tough" category. "I'm so happy that such excellent books have their time in the spotlight," she said. Morris singled out both major non-fiction winners for presenting significant scholarly work in accessible and beautiful books that appealed to the general reader.

Claire Regnault, Te Papa's senior curator for New Zealand culture and history, won the illustrated non-fiction award for her social history Dressed: Fashionable Dress in Aotearoa New Zealand 1840 to 1910 (Te Papa Press). Category finalist The Architect and the Artists: Hacksaw, McCahon, Dibble by Bridget Hackshaw took the Judith Binney Prize for best first work of illustrated non-fiction.

Canterbury poet Joanna Preston won the Mary and Peter Biggs Award for Poetry for her book Tumble (Otago University Press) ahead of more widely known writers: Tayi Tibble with Rangikura, Anne Kennedy with The Sea Walks Into a Wall and Serie Barford with Sleeping With Stones. Nicole Titihuia Hawkins, author of Whai, won the Jessie Mackay Prize for best first book of poetry.

The winners of the general non-fiction, illustrated non-fiction and poetry categories were each awarded $10,000. The winners of the first book prizes each received $2500.