Last week, Dame Fiona Kidman won the 2019 Acorn Foundation Fiction Prize for her eleventh novel. Her first, A Breed of Women, was published 40 years ago in 1979. Here, you can read the opening chapter. A Breed of Women is a frank portrayal of what it was like to be a woman in small-town New … Read more
The Spinoff had multiple scouts at last night’s awards bash. This piece is by Alec Redvers-Hill, and we’ve dropped in a selection of texts from Spinoff publisher Duncan Greive, who maintained a barrage of such updates all night. Duncan Greive’s texts are [italicised]. “So, who won?” It’s a perfectly natural thing to ask about an … Read more
Tatau: A History of Sāmoan Tattooing won the Illustrated Non-Fiction category at the Ockham New Zealand Book Awards last night. Convenor Douglas Lloyd Jenkins called it “a visual feast… a milestone in contemporary publishing… a book that will expand and enrich the knowledge of readers throughout Aotearoa, the Pacific and beyond”. Here, authors Sean Mallon … Read more
Fiona Kidman! The clock strikes nine and we can reveal all. Fiona Kidman Fiona Kidman Fiona Kidman! Congratulations, Fiona Kidman, winner of the 2019 Acorn Foundation Fiction Prize, the richest prize in New Zealand literature, for This Mortal Boy, ahead of Vincent O’Sullivan, Lloyd Jones and Kate Duignan. Fiona wins $53,000 and a lot of … Read more
The deadline for our lavish Ockhams giveaway – a stack of all 16 books on the shortlist – has rolled on by and it’s time to announce a winner. Rant, we said. Tell us about the book that dipped out, the one that should’ve made the shortlist. Tell us why the judges are know-nothing nincompoops. The … Read more