It's Ockham time

It's not long now until New Zealand literature's big night. The winners of the 2024 Ockham New Zealand Book Awards will be announced in the usual glittering ceremony on Wednesday 15 May at the Aotea Centre's Kiri Te Kanawa Theatre, as part of the Auckland Writers Festival.

Winners will be announced in four categories: fiction, poetry, general non-fiction and illustrated non-fiction, along with Best First Book awards in each section. This year's Jann Medlicott Acorn Prize for Fiction is set to be a clash of the titans, with each of the nominees having won the award previously. Tickets are only $16, so come along to see and hear the country's literary luminaries reading from their shortlisted works.

Also at the Auckland Writers Festival, our own Sonya Wilson will be hosting two of the sessions. On Friday 17 May she'll be talking to Liv Sisson about her Ockham-shortlisted book Fungi of Aotearoa: A Curious Forager's Field Guide and on Saturday 18 May she's chairing a panel of writers on the theme Fantasy & Romantasy Unwrapped.