The Ockham New Zealand Book Awards have announced the longlist for 2017.
Forty titles have made the list, with 10 in each of the four awards categories: Fiction, Illustrated Non-Fiction, General Non-Fiction and Poetry.
The Acorn Foundation Fiction Prize category includes C.K Stead's newest novel, The Name on the Door is Not Mine, as well as Dad Art by Damien Wilkins and Tail of the Taniwha by Courtney Sina Meredith.
Sarah Laing's ode to Katherine Mansfield, Mansfield and Me: A Graphic Memoir, is up for the Illustrated Non-Fiction prize, as well as Bruce Ansley and Jane Ussher's Islands: A New Zealand Journey.
Helene Wong's biography Being Chinese: A New Zealander’s Story is up for the General Non-Fiction prize while Hera Lindsay Bird's acclaimed self-titled book makes the Poetry section.
"The awards received a large number of entries again this year and the standard was very high across all categories," says New Zealand Book Awards Trust chair Nicola Legat.
"That shows that this country's publishing, and indeed its literature, is in rude good health."
Four panels of specialist judges selected the longlist, which was collated from 150 entries.
Newshub.
