‘Stunned and shocked’: Ingrid Horrocks wins top prize at New Zealand’s Ockham awards for her fiction debut | New Zealand
First-time fiction writer Ingrid Horrocks has won New Zealand’s richest literary prize for her debut short story collection. All Their Lives.
The Wellington-based poet, essayist and memoirist won the prestigious Jann Medlicott Acorn fiction prize of NZ$65,000 (AU$53,000, £28,500) at the 2026 Ockham New Zealand book awards on Wednesday night. The book tells the journey of nine women from nine different life stages and generations on politics, gender and motherhood.
Horrocks’s award marks the fifth time a short story collection has won the top prize since the awards began 58 years ago.
Horrocks has been shortlisted for the Jann Medlicott Acorn prize alongside debut novelist and food writer Laura Vincent, artist and writer Sam Mahon and award-winning author Catherine Chidgey, the only author to have previously won the grand prize twice.
Speaking to the Guardian, Horrocks said he was “stunned and shocked” when his name was mentioned and that his victory had encouraged him to write more fiction.
“And hopefully that means more people will read my book,” he said.
After years of writing nonfiction about women’s lives, she said fiction allowed her to get inside and get closer to her characters. “That was really exciting for me as a writer.”
Horrocks’ stories range from rural New Zealand at the end of the First World War to the Weiberfastnacht in Berlin to the protests against the Springbok tour in 1981; deftly traverses continents, centuries and political concerns; While all this is happening, women are at the center, with the participation of pioneering feminist writer and philosopher Mary Wollstonecraft.
Editing judge Craig Cliff said: Guard Horrocks’s collection is “crisp, clear and unobstructed”.
“The way she deals with issues of gender and sexuality and her ability to address different perspectives on femininity is very warranted,” she said.
International guest judge Leslie Hurtig said she read All Their Lives in one sitting.
“I loved the range of experiences women represented; as children, lovers, mothers, artists, the women in these stories transcended timelines and socioeconomic backgrounds to reveal stories that reached far beyond national borders,” she said.
Short stories and firsts were celebrated in many categories on Wednesday night. In the Mātātuhi Foundation’s first books categories, former New Zealand prime minister Jacinda Ardern won the EH McCormick award for general non-fiction for her memoir A Different Kind of Power, while the Hubert Church award for best first book went to Auckland author John Prins for his debut short story collection. Pastoral Care.
Samoan-born poet Nafanua Purcell Kersel (Satupa’itea, Faleālupo, Aleipata, Tuaefu) won the Mary and Peter Biggs poetry prize for her debut poem. Black Sugar Cane.
Novelist Tina Makereti (Te Ātiawa, Ngāti Tūwharetoa, Ngāti Rangatahi-Matakore, Pākehā) won the overall non-fiction award. This Necessity Within UsIn this, a collection of autobiographical essays and her first non-fiction book, historian Elizabeth Cox won the prize for illustrated non-fiction for her book Mr Ward’s Map: Victorian Wellington Street by Street.
