NZ publishing’s top 40 of 2020

Here are the local books that have made the longlist in this year’s Ockham New Zealand Book Awards. The shortlist is out on March 4 and the awards are announced on May 12 at this year’s Auckland Writers’ Festival.

FICTION

Lonely Asian Woman – Sharon Lam* Necessary Secrets – Greg McGee Moonlight Sonata – Eileen Merriman Pearly Gates – Owen Marshall

Loving Sylvie – Elizabeth Smither

A Mistake – Carl Shuker

Attraction – Ruby Porter*

Halibut on the Moon – David Vann Auē – Becky Manawatu*

The Absolute Book – Elizabeth Knox

GENERAL NON-FICTION

Dead Letters: Censorship and Subversion in New Zealand 1914-1920 – Jared Davidson

Finding Frances Hodgkins – Mary Kisler

Wild Honey: Reading New Zealand Women’s Poetry – Paula Green

The New Zealand Wars: Ngā Pakanga o Aotearoa – Vincent O’Malley

Whale Oil – Margie Thomson

Shirley Smith: An Examined Life – Sarah Gaitanos

Dead People I Have Known – Shayne Carter* Women Mean Business: Colonial Businesswomen in New Zealand – Catherine Bishop Fifteen Million Years in Antarctica – Rebecca Priestley

Towards the Mountain – Sarah Myles*

ILLUSTRATED NON-FICTION

Frances Hodgkins: European Journeys – editors Catherine Hammond & Mary Kisler The New Photography: New Zealand’s Firstgeneration Contemporary Photographers

– Athol McCredie

The Meaning of Trees: The History and Use of New Zealand’s Native Plants – Robert Vennell*

McCahon Country – Justin Paton

We Are Here: An Atlas of Aotearoa – Chris McDowall & Tim Denee

Protest Tautohetohe: Objects of Resistance, Persistence and Defiance – Stephanie

Gibson, Matariki Williams, Puawai Cairns Louise Henderson: From Life – Felicity Milburn, Lara Strongman, Julia Waite

Colin McCahon: There Is Only One Direction, Vol. I 1919-1959 – Peter Simpson

Crafting Aotearoa: A Cultural History of Making in New Zealand and the wider

Moana Oceania – editors Kolokesa U Māhina-Tuai, Karl Chitham, Damian Skinner

Funny As: The Story of New Zealand Comedy – Paul Horan & Philip Matthews*

POETRY

How to Live – Helen Rickerby

Under Glass – Gregory Kan

Because a Woman’s Heart Is Like a Needle at the Bottom of the Ocean – Sugar Magnolia Wilson*

Back Before You Know – Murray Edmond How I Get Ready – Ashleigh Young

Ransack – Essa May Ranapiri

Lay Studies – Steven Toussaint

Listening In – Lynley Edmeades

Craven – Jane Arthur*

Moth Hour – Anne Kennedy

*Authors who will be eligible for nomination in the awards’ best first book categories.