Fiso cooks up Ockham winner 13 May 2021 08:30 AM Photo: Chef Monique Fiso Facebook.
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Wellington chef Monique Fiso’s treasury of Māori food, Hiakai, has won the illustrated non-fiction and the best first book of illustrated non-fiction tohu in this year’s Ockham New Zealand Book Awards.
The awards were presented at a gala event in Auckland last night.
Fiso will speak on Sunday at the Auckland Writers Festival on her mission of taking Māori cuisine to the world.
A discretionary Māori Language Award, Te Mūrau o te Tuhi, went to Tā Tīmoti Kāretu for Mātāmua ko te Kupu!, which draws on his life s work composing, performing and teaching haka and waiata.
Composite: Stuff
Airini Beautrais’ Bug Week is the first short story collection to win the Acorn Prize in over a decade, and the second ever.
First-time nominee Airini Beautrais was awarded the country’s premier fiction prize at the 2021 Ockham New Zealand Book Awards on Wednesday night. The Whanganui-based author beat out two previous winners and a previous nominee to win the Jann Medlicott Acorn Prize for Fiction, becoming the first winner for a collection of short stories in over a decade. Beautrais took out the $57,000 prize for
Bug Week, her first work of prose following four books of poetry. It is only the second ever short story collection to win the Acorn Prize.
Whanganui writer Airini Beautrais has won the premier award at the 2021 Ockham New Zealand Book Awards for her book
Bug Week - it s her first book of fiction and it s also the first time the category has been won by a collection of short stories in more than a decade.
Airini Beautrais.
Photo: Tracy Grant
Beautrais won the $57,000 Jann Medlicott Acorn Prize for Fiction with a book that convenor of judges Kiran Dass described as a knockout from start to finish. Casting a devastating and witty eye on humanity at its most fallible and wonky, this is a tightly-wound and remarkably assured collection. Atmospheric and refined, these stories evoke a strong sense of quiet unease, slow burning rage and the absurdly comic, Dass said.