Creative Writing graduates shortlisted for 2017 Ockham NZ Book Awards
Five of our graduates are up for awards in this year's Fiction, Poetry and General Non-Fiction categories.
The 2017 Ockham New Zealand Book Awards shortlist features graduates of Victoria's MA in Creative Writing programme in three of the four Award categories. Read the full shortlist.
The multi-award winning novelist and short-story writer Catherine Chidgey, a graduate of the very first MA in Creative Writing in 1997, is shortlisted for the Acorn Foundation Fiction Prize, for The Wish Child (Victoria University Press), alongside Owen Marshall, C.K. Stead and Emma Neale.
On the Poetry Award shortlist graduates Tusiata Avia (Fale Aitu | Spirit House, VUP), Gregory Kan (This Paper Boat, Auckland University Press) and Hera Lindsay Bird (Hera Lindsay Bird, VUP) keep company with Andrew Johnston - another VUP author.
Ashleigh Young, fresh from her Windham-Campbell Literature Prize win, is shortlisted for the Royal Society Te Apārangi Award for General Non-Fiction for her essay collection Can You Tolerate This? (VUP). She joins Anthony Byrt, Adam Dudding and Ben Schrader.
The longlist for the Awards also included graduates and former students Nick Bollinger, Rachel Bush, Lynley Edmeades and Maria McMillan, and IIML staff members Chris Price and Damien Wilkins.
2017 marks another bumper year for Victoria University Press, which published six of the twelve books in the Poetry, Fiction and General Non-Fiction categories.
The overall winners (including of the four Best First Book awards) will be announced on Tuesday May 16, 2017.