Wellingtonian wins prestigious award
Adam also reviews books for The Listener and Radio New Zealand.
A Wellington author has won New Zealand’s premier literature prize.
Pip Adam won the Acorn Foundation Fiction Prize for her 2017 novel The New Animals at the Ockham New Zealand Book Awards held last night in Auckland.
The prize includes $50,000 cash and has been previously won by Catherine Chidgey, Eleanor Catton, Emily Perkins, Charlotte Grimshaw and Lloyd Jones.
The novel, which last year received a mixed critical response, is Adam’s second. Her first, I’m
Working On A Building, was published in 2013, also by Victoria University Press. Adam, who has a PhD in creative writing from Victoria University, also reviews books for The Listener and Radio New Zealand.
She lectures on fiction and creative-nonfiction at Massey University, and teaches at Arohata and Rimutaka Prisons. She is the host of the Better Off Read podcast.
Other winners on the night included Auckland journalist Diana Witchtel, who received the Royal Society’s Te Aparangi Award for General Non-Fiction for her memoir Driving To Treblinka: A Long Search For A Lost Father. The memoir also won the EH McCormick Best First Book Award for General Non-Fiction.
New Plymouth poet Elizabeth Smither earned the Ockham Awards’ poetry category for the
third time, for her collection Night Horse, while noted academics Alison Jones and Kuni Kaa Jenkins won the Illustrated Non-Fiction category for Tuai: A Traveller In Two Worlds.
Other Fiction section finalists included Canterbury University professor Patrick Evans’ Salt
Picnic, Wellington lawyer Brannavan Gnanalingam’s Sodden
DownStream, and Annaleese Jochems’ debut novel, Baby, which won the Hubert Church Best First Book Award for Fiction.
Other winners in the Best First Book category were Hannah Mettner, for Fully Clothed
And So Forgetful, as well as Marcus Thomas and Neil Silverwood for Caves: Exploring New Zealand’s Subterranean Wilderness. Each received $2500.