Award winning writers set for The Marlborough Book Festival

It's the Oscars of the book world and now two of the winners are confirmed for Marlborough's  Book Festival.

Two of the winners of the prestigious 2023 Ockham New Zealand Book Awards will headline this year’s Marlborough Book Festival.

Catherine Chidgey and Nick Bollinger are among 16 authors who will speak at the festival to be held from Thursday 20 July to Sunday 23 July in Blenheim.

Catherine won the prestigious Jann Medlicott Acorn Prize for Fiction for her book, The Axeman’s Carnival, at the award ceremony in Auckland last night (Wed night).

It’s the second time Catherine has won this award – she also won in 2017 for her book The Wish Child.

The Ockham judges said her book was “a page-turning novel of depth, pathos and humanity that skilfully infuses comedy with a building sense of menace, narrated by a precocious magpie called Tama”.

Akin to receiving an Oscar, the Jann Medlicott Acorn Prize for Fiction is the crowning achievement for New Zealand writers. Catherine says she is thrilled to be awarded the Acorn for the second time.

"Winning the first Acorn was the highlight of my career, so it’s really lovely now to have the other bookend, a pair of Acorns, on the mantlepiece,” Catherine says.

Well known music broadcaster and writer Nick Bollinger won the Booksellers Aotearoa New Zealand Award for Illustrated Non-Fiction for his book, Jumping Sundays: The Rise and Fall of the Counterculture in Aotearoa New Zealand.

The award’s non-fiction convenor Jared Davidson said Nick had “written a compelling account of an epoch-making period, linking international trends to the local context in a purposeful-yet-playful way”.

The screenwriter and author Michael Bennett (Ngāti Pikiao, Ngāti Whakaue) (Better the Blood) and sailor and novelist Cristina Sanders (Mrs Jewell and the Wreck of the General Grant) are also heading to Blenheim for the festival.

Micheal andCristina, along with Monty Soutar (Ngāti Porou, Ngāti Awa, Ngāi Tai ki Tāmaki, Ngāti Kahungunu) (Kāwai: For Such a Time as This), were all finalists along with Catherine for the fiction award, which is worth $64,000.

Festival chair Sonia O’Regan says the festival wanted to congratulate the winners and all the finalists of the big award, and were excited to be able to host several of them in Blenheim in July.

The festival was shaping up to be a fantastic weekend of hearing inspiring authors at the top of their game talk about their lives and work.

The ninth annual festival will be held at the ASB Theatre Marlborough and in the new Marlborough Library and Art Gallery.

Just one public session will be held on the Thursday – an interview with Nick Bollinger about music writing at 6.30pm in the new library.

Several authors will take part in the Little Marlborough Book Festival visiting schools during the day on Friday 21 July and the festival’s gala evening will be held on Friday 21 July.

During this session five authors will take the stage to speak to the theme, The Heart of the Matter.

Throughout the weekend, each author will be the star of at least one session in conversation with another book-lover, many of whom are Marlborough locals.

Each will go beyond the pages of their latest work to delve into the stories behind the story, and why it was an important one for them to share.

The festival is run by a charitable trust supported by sponsoring local businesses: Astrolabe, Cloudy Bay, Dog Point and Lawson’s Dry Hills, along with Gascoigne Wicks Lawyers, McKendry Motors, Jim Tannock Photography and Paper Plus Blenheim.

Visit www.marlboroughbookfest.co.nzfor more information and to sign up for our newsletter and receive regular updates.

Tickets go on sale June 6