First-time fiction writer Ingrid Horrocks has won New Zealand’s richest literary prize for her debut short story collection, All Her Lives.
The Wellington-based poet, essayist and memoirist won the prestigious NZ$65,000 (A$53,000, £28,500) Jann Medlicott Acorn prize for fiction at the 2026 Ockham New Zealand book awards on Wednesday night. The book follows nine women across nine different life stages and generations, as they navigate politics, gender and motherhood.
Horrocks’ win marks only the fifth time a short story collection has won the top prize since the awards began 58 years ago.
Horrocks was shortlisted for the Jann Medlicott Acorn prize alongside debut novelist and food writer Laura Vincent, artist and author Sam Mahon, and award-winning writer Catherine Chidgey, the only author to have previously won the top prize twice.
Speaking to the Guardian, Horrocks said she was “stunned and shocked” when her name was called out, and that her win had encouraged to write more fiction.
“And I hope it means more people will read my book,” she said.
After years of writing about women’s lives as nonfiction, fiction had allowed her to get inside and closer to her characters, she said. “That was really exciting for me as a writer.”
Horrocks’ stories move through rural New Zealand at the end of the first world war to Berlin’s Weiberfastnacht, to the protests against the Springbok tour in 1981, deftly traversing continents, centuries and political concerns – all the while with women at the centre, including an appearance from the pioneering feminist writer and philosopher Mary Wollstonecraft.
Fiction judge Craig Cliff told the Guardian that Horrocks’ collection was “crisp, clear and unencumbered”.
“The way she deals with aspects of gender and sexuality, and her ability to tackle different perspectives of womanhood is so assured,” he said.
International guest judge Leslie Hurtig said she read All Her Lives in one sitting.
“I loved the range of women’s experiences represented; as child, lover, mother, artist, the women in these stories transcended timelines and socioeconomic backgrounds to reveal storylines that reached far beyond national boundaries,” she said.
Short stories and other firsts were celebrated in several categories on Wednesday night. In the Mātātuhi Foundation’s categories for first books, former New Zealand prime minister Jacinda Ardern won the EH McCormick prize for general nonfiction for her memoir A Different Kind of Power, while the Hubert Church prize for best first book went to Auckland author John Prins for his debut short story collection, Pastoral Care.
Samoa-born poet Nafanua Purcell Kersel (Satupa‘itea, Faleālupo, Aleipata, Tuaefu) won the Mary and Peter Biggs award for poetry with her debut, Black Sugarcane.
Novelist Tina Makereti (Te Ātiawa, Ngāti Tūwharetoa, Ngāti Rangatahi-Matakore, Pākehā) won the general nonfiction award for This Compulsion in Us, a collection of autobiographical essays and her first nonfiction book, while historian Elizabeth Cox won the illustrated nonfiction award for Mr Ward’s Map: Victorian Wellington Street by Street.