History of the NZSA Jessie Mackay & Hubert Church Memorial Awards

NZSA Best First Book Awards

The history of these awards is the history of success in New Zealand literature.

The awards were originally created by PEN NZ (The New Zealand Society of Authors) in the 1940s to memorialise beloved figures in New Zealand literary history, and have recognised and encouraged excellence in poetry and prose ever since. These two awards have launched many careers and showcased writers and writing as a central cultural expression in New Zealand. Their purpose is to recognise excellence in literature, and in doing that, to foster it.  And after more than eighty years, they’re still going strong.

The list of past winners is impressive. By honouring early achievements, the awards both supported and anticipated success, as winners’ reputations and biographies show. Janet Frame is probably the most striking example of the impact an award can have: the award saved her.

As a young woman, Janet struggled with mental illness, and following a suicide attempt at age 19, she was committed to psychiatric care. For years she went in and out of psychiatric institutions where she was treated with electroconvulsive and other therapies. But she kept writing and in 1951, her first book Lagoon and Other Stories was published. The following year, Janet was back in Seacliff Hospital, and her mother had authorised a pre-frontal lobotomy, a radical operation that may or may not have cured her illness, but would certainly have ended her writing career. Then her book won the 1952 Hubert Church Award. News of the win arrived in time to persuade the hospital superintendent to forbid the operation.

The award literally saved her. She went on to publish numerous works to national and international acclaim, and to receive New Zealand’s highest honours.

PEN NZ and NZSA

The awards have their origin in PEN New Zealand, now known as the New Zealand Society of Authors. PEN is an international association of writers established in 1921 with the aim of promoting literature and protecting the right to freedom of expression. Autonomous centres were established all over the world, including PEN New Zealand, established in 1934.

PEN NZ became New Zealand Society of Authors in 1989, retaining the original aims but extending them to seek improvements in income and conditions for NZ writers, to promote Aotearoa NZ writing and literary culture, and to develop the community of writers. One of the ways it does this is through the NZSA Best First Book awards, which are the current iteration of two longstanding prizes: the Jessie Mackay Memorial Award for Poetry, and the Hubert Church Memorial Award for Prose.

History of the Awards

Jessie Mackay

Jessie Mackay

Both awards began in the 1940s; the first was to memorialise the esteemed New Zealand poet, Jessie Mackay.

Miss Mackay was the first NZ poet to achieve national and international recognition. She was also a journalist, activist, teacher, and mentor.

She was born in 1864 at Double Hill Station in Canterbury, where her father was a shepherd and manager. She left home aged fourteen to train as a teacher in Christchurch and taught in various schools for twenty years before moving to Dunedin in 1898 to work as a journalist for the Otago Witness. She returned to teaching briefly for financial reasons, until finally abandoning it to write full time.

She earned her living through writing for the rest of her life, no small thing for a single woman in those days. She wrote a column for the Witness for thirty years, worked as an editor for the Canterbury Times, contributed to periodicals, newspapers, weeklies and journals in New Zealand and overseas, and wrote in support of many social justice causes including temperance, women’s franchise, and penal reform. And she wrote poetry, producing six volumes in her lifetime. It is for her poetry that she is best remembered, and for the poetry award named in her honour.

Although Allen Curnow left her out of his influential 1945 Book of New Zealand Verse, she is credited with creating an audience for New Zealand poetry, an essential condition for the great flowering that was to come. She died in 1938.

PEN members, stirred by her recent death, made a resolution:

‘The PEN Centre of New Zealand records its deep sorrow at the death of Miss Jessie Mackay, a foundation member of the centre and a well-loved veteran of New Zealand letters…Jessie Mackay was one of the most gifted and original poets that this country has produced, and her genius was recognised abroad as well as at home… PEN salutes the memory of a great poet and a great woman.’  (Pen Gazette Issue No. 3. May 12, 1939)

Members then proposed the establishment of a memorial prize in her honour, and fundraising efforts began. PEN dedicated an initial sum, subscriptions were sought from leading citizens and societies, later augmented by government grant, and in 1941, the Jessie Mackay Memorial Award for Poetry was launched. Two judges were appointed by the executive committee of PEN, and the call went out. Much to everyone’s surprise, the call attracted almost four hundred poetry submissions from more than 150 people.

The inaugural 1941 award winner was Douglas Stewart for his poem ‘Elegy for an Airman.’  Douglas Stewart is recognised as a major Australian poet, and is widely known for his contribution as literary editor of the Bulletin, and as a supporter of Australian writers.

List of Winners from 1941 to 2024 for the Jessie Mackay Memorial Award for Poetry 

1941    Douglas Stewart OA                       Elegy for an Airman

1942    R I F Pattison                                 Youth Passes

1943    Mary B Gullery nee Greig              Year’s Wane

1948    Ruth Gilbert                                     unknown

1949    Ruth Gilbert                                      Lazarus and Other Poems

1950    Mary B Greig aka MB Gullery          unknown

1951    James K Baxter                                Seven Poems

1952    Charles Spear                                  Twopence Coloured

1953    Mary Stanley                                    Starveling Year

1955    Pat Wilson (Patrick)                         Staying at Balisoclare

1958    James K Baxter                                In Fires of No Return

1959    MK Joseph (Michael Kennedy Joseph)  The Living Countries

1960    Basil Dowling                                   A Letter to D’Arcy Cresswell

1963    (joint winners)            RAK Mason (Ronald Allison Kells Mason)  Collected Poems

                                               Allen Curnow QM; CBE ONZ       A Small Room with Large Windows

1964    Gordon Challis                                 Building

1965    Vincent O’Sullivan PM; DCNZOM, PL    Our Burning Time

1967    (joint winners)            Ruth Gilbert          The Luthier

                                              James K Baxter     Pig Island Letters

1968    Fleur Adcock QM OBE CNZOM Tigers

1969    Kendrick Smithyman                      Flying to Palmerston

1970    (joint winners)                 Charles Brasch     Not Far Off

                                                    Vincent O’Sullivan PM; DCNZOM, PL    Revenants

1971    James K Baxter                               unknown

1972    Fleur Adcock QM  OBE CNZOM    High Tide in the Garden

1973    Keith Sinclair                                  The Firewheel Tree

1976    Michael Jackson                             Latitudes in Exile

1977    Gary McCormick                            Naked and Nameless

1978    Joanna Paul                                   Imogen

1979    Kevin Ireland PM; OBE                  Literary Cartoons

1980    Allen Curnow QM; CBE ONZ         An Incorrigible Music: A Sequence of Poems

1981    Martin Edmond PM                        Streets of Music

1983    Cilla McQueen PM, PL, MNZM    Homing-In

1984    Leigh Davis                                   Willy’s Gazette

1985    Viviene Joseph                              A Desirable Property

1986    Marina Makarova                          For Yesterday

1987    (joint winners)                         David Eggleton PL; PM    South Pacific Sunrise

                                                           Trixie Te Arama Menzies     Uenuku

1988    Anne French                                All Cretans are Liars

1989    Michele Leggott NZOM, PM, PL  Like This?

1990    Viginia Were                                Juliet Bravo Juliet

1991    Robert Sullivan                            Jazz Waiata

1992    Rob Allan                                     Karitane Postcards

1993    Ted Rutter                                    Jewels in the Grass

1994    Andrew Johnston                         How to Talk

1996    James Brown                              Go Round the Power Please

1997    Diane Brown NZOM                    Before the Divorce We Go to Disneyland

1998    Kapka Kassabova                       All Roads Led to the Sea

1999    Kate Camp                                 Unfamiliar Legends of the Sun

2000    Glenn Colquhoun                       The Art of Walking Upright

2001    Stephanie De Montalk                Animals Indoors

2002    Chris Price                                  Husk

2003    Kay McKenzie Cooke                 Feeding the Dogs: Poems

2004    Cliff Fell                                      The Adulterer’s Bible: Poems

2005    Sonja Yelich                               Clung

2006    Karlo Mila NZOM                       Dream Fish Floating

2007    Airini Beautrais                           The Sacred Heart

2008    Jessica Le Bas                           Incognito

2009    Sam Sampson                          Everything Talks

2010    Selina Tusitala Marsh PL; NZOM, RSNZ   Fast Talking PI

2011    Lynn Jenner                              Dear Sweet Harry

2012    John Adams                              Briefcase

2013    Helen Heath                              Graft

2014    Marty Smith                               Horse with Hat

2016    Chris Tse PL                              How to be Dead in a Year of Snakes

2017    Hera Lindsay Bird                      Hera Lindsay Bird

2018    Hannah Mettner                        Fully Clothed and So Forgetful

2019    Tayi Tibble                                 Poukahangatus

2020    Jane Arthur                               Craven

2021    Jason Nieuwland                       I Am a Human Being

2022    Nicole Titihuia Hawkins             Whai

2023    Kadro Mohomed                       We’re All Made of Lightening

2024    Megan Kitching                         At the Point of Seeing

2025   Rex Letoa Paget                        Manualiʻi

Hubert Church

Hubert Church

Hubert Church is listed as an Australian poet, writer of short stories and novels. The effort to memorialise his work resulted as much from acclaim as from a bequest made by his New Zealand-born wife, Catherine.

Hubert Church was born in Tasmania in 1857 and taken to England for schooling in 1865. At age 12 he was struck on the head by a cricket ball, and went completely deaf. Left to his own devices, he became an omnivorous reader, then a writer. He studied law in New Zealand and was employed as a clerk in the Colonial Treasurer’s Department in Wellington. In 1900 he married Catherine Livingston McGregor, and in 1902, published his first volume of verse. The couple lived in London, Australia and New Zealand before settling in Melbourne in 1923, where he was well-known and admired in literary circles. There were no children.

Over the course of his writing career he wrote short stories, essays, novels and three volumes of poetry. Some of his poems were painted on the inside doors of Wellington trams, and his poetry was also praised by Jessie Mackay. He died in 1932.

In the early 1940s, his widow Catherine made a bequest to PEN New Zealand, to establish a prize memorialising him.  In so doing, she was considered a great and generous friend to New Zealand writers.

In 1945, the Hubert Church Memorial Award for Prose was offered for the first time. The inaugural recipient was MH Holcroft, who won the award in 1945 and again in 1947. Monte Holcroft is remembered both as an essayist and as editor of  the NZ Listener for more than 18 years, which he helped established as a ‘unique institution at the centre of New Zealand’s cultural life.’

List of Winners from 1945 to 2024 for the Hubert Church Memorial Award          

1945    MH Holcroft (Monte Holcroft)      Timeless World

1947    MH Holcroft                                 Encircling Seas

1948    Lillian G Keyes                            A Biography of Thomas Arnold

1949    David Ballantyne                          The Cunninghams

1950    JC Beaglehole (John Cawte Beaglehole)  Ch 6. History of Victoria University College

1951    Frank Sargeson                            Up on the Roof and Down Again

1952    Janet Frame ONZ CBE; AFI         Lagoon and Other Stories

1953    Oliver Duff                                     Sundowner

1955    EH McCormack (Eric Hall McCormack) The Expatriate

1956    Maurice Duggan                             Immanuel’s Land

1957    Dennis McEldowney                       The World Regained

1958    MK Joseph (Michael Kennedy Joseph)   I’ll Soldier No More

1959    Maurice Shadbolt                            The New Zealanders

1960    Noel Hilliard                                    Māori Girl

1961    Ian Cross CMG                               After Anzac Day

1964    Janet Frame ONZ CBE; AFI          Scented Garden for the Blind

1965    Keith Sinclair                                  William Pember Reeves: New Zealand Fabian

1967    Charles Begg and Neil Begg          Dusky Bay: In the Steps of Captain Cook

1968    Frank Sargeson                              The Hangover

1969    Joy Cowley AFI; ONZ DCNZM OBE  Nest in a Falling Tree

1970    Sheila Natusch                               Brother Wohlers

1971    Janet Frame ONZ CBE; AFI          Intensive Care

1972    Frank Sargeson                             The Drive

1973    Janet Frame ONZ CBE; AFI         Daughter Buffalo

1976    Rosemary McLeod                        A Girl Like I

1977    Peter Adams                                 Fatal Necessity: British Intervention in NZ

1978    John Sligo                                     The Cave

1979    Maurice Gee                                  Plumb

1980    Janet Frame                                  Living in the Maniototo

1981    Yvonne du Fresne                         Farvel and Other Stories

1982    Michael Morrisey                          The Fat Lady and the Astronomer

1984    Joan Druett                                   Exotic Intruders

1985    Denys Trussell                              Fairburn

1986    Michael Harlow                            Take a Risk with Your Language Make a Poem

1987    James Belich PMA; NZOM          The New Zealand Wars and the Victorian Interpretation of Racial Conflict

1988    Elizabeth Knox CNZM; PMA; L    After Z Hour

1989    Lynley Hood                                  Sylvia!

1990    Clare Matheson                             Fate Cries Enough

1991    Alan Duff                                        Once Were Warriors

1992    Peter Wells                                    Dangerous Desires

1993    Forbes Williams                             Motel View

1994    Vivienne Plumb                             The Wife who Spoke Japanese in her Sleep

1996    Emily Perkins MNZM                     Not Her Real Name and Other Stories

1997    Dominic Sheehan                          Finding Home

1998    Catherine Chidgey                        In a Fishbone Church

1999    William Brandt                              Alpha Male

2000    Duncan Sarkies                           Stray Thoughts and Nosebleeds

2001    Karyn Hay                                    Emerald Budgies

2002    Craig Marriner                             Stonedogs

2003    Paula Morris MNZM; L                Queen of Beauty

2004    Kelly Ann Morey                          Bloom

2005    Julian Novitz                                My Real Life and Other Stories

2006    Gillian Ranstead                          A Red Silk Sea

2007    Rachel King                                 The Sound of Butterflies

2008    Mary McCullum                           The Blue

2009    Eleanor Catton MNZM                The Rehearsal

2010    Anna Taylor                                  Relief

2011    Pip Adam                                     Everything We Hoped For

2012    Hamish Clayton                           Wulf

2013    Lawrence Patchett                       I Got His Blood on Me

2014    Amy Head                                    Tough

2016    David Coventry                            The Invisible Mile

2017    Gina Cole                                     Black Ice Matter

2018    Annaleese Jochems                     Baby

2019    Kirsten Warner                             The Sound of Breaking Glass

2020    Becky Manawatu                          Auē

2021    Rachel Kerr                                  Victory Park

2022    Rebecca K Reilly                          Greta and Valdin

2023    Anthony Lapwood                         Home Theatre

2024    Emma Hislop                                Ruin and Other Stories

2025    Michelle Rahurahu                        Poorhara

Evolution of the Awards

Applications for both awards were to be made for work produced or published the previous year. Each year the entry rules were circulated, and two or more judges appointed by the executive committee of PEN NZ. Judges were drawn from among a qualified elite, mostly PEN members (numbering about fifty at that time) and/or past winners. Judges deliberated over several months and reported their decisions to the executive, who were then responsible for making the awards, always at their discretion.

Prize monies were derived annually from interest or dividends from the Hubert Church bequest or the Jessie Mackay Fund accordingly, with any shortfalls were augmented by government grants, which were administered by the Ministry of Internal Affairs. Understandably, award decisions also required Ministry endorsement.

Results were usually published in the PEN Gazette, complete with judges’ comments and a mention of runners-up. Some years no poetry award was made, because judges found that ‘no entry came up to the standard considered worthy of a prize.’ Other years, judges admitted to a very close call. Judgements of literary merit are always subjective and values-based, but were on occasion seen as arbitrary or unfair. There were issues with how rules were interpreted, especially around eligibility, repeat winners and joint awards. New Zealand is a small pond and prizes were few. There were factions and affiliations. Controversy was inevitable.

In 1972 PEN Gazette published an article from member John Reece calling for revision of entry criteria. He referred back to the 1962 joint award, which he criticised for stretching eligibility too far, and he called the 1972 joint award ‘bizarre.’ He alluded to new rules that had been developed but not actioned. Reasons were not given – perhaps internal politics, perhaps inertia. But years of rumblings finally came to a head the following year with the announcement that the Jessie Mackay award was delayed ‘due to a dispute.’

Details of the dispute were not discussed in the gazette, but were apparently common knowledge, possibly via national newspapers in Letters to the Editor, that great public forum for dissent, if not scandal. How many times could a writer win? Did the work itself have to be new, or could it simply be newly collected? And how could fiction be fairly compared to works of non-fiction, when each category is so fundamentally different? Improvements in the rules and entry criteria were clearly overdue.

The Ministry of Internal Affairs approved new rules in 1975, which had been revised ‘to ensure fair distribution of the awards.’ Rule changes were signalled to the wider community by changing the award names to New Zealand Poetry Award, incorporating Jessie Mackay, and the New Zealand Prose Award, incorporating Hubert Church. However, the most successful and significant change was accomplished in 1977 when both awards became Best First Book. This went a long way towards improving fair distribution.

Another important change to the awards came in 1992, when the prose award was split into fiction and non-fiction categories. The Hubert Church Award would henceforth be awarded for fiction, and a non-fiction prize added. The non-fiction prize was named for notable historian EH McCormick, himself an early Hubert Church winner.

Before 1996, there were two major New Zealand literary prizes, the New Zealand Book Awards (1976–1995) and the Goodman Fielder Wattie Book Awards (1968–1993). Montana took over the sponsorship of the Wattie Awards in 1994, and thus became the Montana Book Awards (1994–1995). In 1996, the two awards merged to form the Montana New Zealand Book Awards (1996–2009). In 2010, sponsorship of the awards was assumed by New Zealand Post, which had been supporting the Children’s Book Awards for the previous 14 years.

In 2015, the governance and management of New Zealand’s national book awards were assumed by the New Zealand Book Awards Trust Te Ohu Tiaki i Te Rau Hiringa. Ockham Residential became the principal sponsor, and the name of the awards was changed to the Ockham New Zealand Book Awards.

The award categories were streamlined, and a fourth Best First Book Award was introduced in Judith Binney’s name for illustrated non-fiction.

Since 2016, the awards have been held each year in May, as part of the Auckland Writers Festival, in a partnership between the New Zealand Book Awards Trust and the Auckland Readers and Writers Festival Trust.

In any literary ecosystem, different awards might have seemed to be competing, but were in fact evolving, as varied interests sought to ensure the space to celebrate all the books that deserve to be acknowledged. Different groups support writing as an art form and also to sell books, building awareness of New Zealand authors, and generally promoting literary culture in Aotearoa.

The original awards live on as the Jessie Mackay Prize for Poetry and the Hubery Church Prize for Prose, part of the Ockham New Zealand Book Awards, and the Mātātuhi Foundation Best First Book Awards.

Award winners

For many writers, the awards were their first taste of success. Recognition, encouragement, and prize money made an all-important difference, and most winners kept writing. They continued to write and publish books, short stories, essays, poetry, reviews and columns, fiction and non-fiction.

John Cawte Beaglehole won the Hubert Church in 1950, just as his career as a historian was taking off. His greatest scholarly achievements were the editing of Captain James Cook’s journals of voyaging and exploration, followed by the acclaimed biography of Cook.

Maurice Shadbolt won the Hubert Church winner in 1959, and went on to become the first New Zealand novelist to earn a good living as a fiction writer, achieving a wide readership. Ian Cross won the Hubert Church in 1961 with After Anzac Day. Unable to make a living with creative writing, notwithstanding the success of his famous novel The God Boy, he worked in public relations, then held positions of cultural influence as editor of the NZ Listener, and then for many years as chairman of the NZ Broadcasting Corporation.

Other winners kept writing while earning a living as reviewers, critics, journalists, publishers, historians, teachers, or academics. Emily Perkins won the Hubert Church in 1996, and became an academic. She has to date written five novels, many short stories and plays, winning two top fiction prizes and receiving an Arts Foundation of New Zealand Award. Another example is Peter Wells, who won in 1992 with Dangerous Desires. He continued to write fiction, was a film-maker and historian, and co-founded with Stephanie Johnson the Auckland Writers Festival. He was awarded the MNZOM in 2006.

Beloved and multi-awarded children’s writer Joy Cowley won the Hubert Church in 1969 with Nest in a Falling Tree. Eleanor Catton’s first book won the award in 2009, and went on to win the Booker Prize in 2013 with her second book, The Luminaries.

In 2022 Rebecca K Reilly won the Hubert Church Best First Book with Greta and Valdin. It was a best seller and received critical acclaim in Aotearoa Zealand and internationally. It was shortlisted in several international prizes, translated, and warmly reviewed in the New York Times.

Most past winners of the Jessie Mackay Award likewise produced further works of poetry or fiction, such as Fleur Adcock who won the Jessie Mackay Award in 1968 with Tigers and again in 1972 with High Tide in the Garden.  Over a long career she published multiple volumes of poetry and was recognised in Aotearoa New Zealand with an OBE,  CNZOM, and the Queens Gold Medal for Poetry, one of the Commonwealth’s major prizes. Allen Curnow won in 1963 with a volume of poems and again in 1980, later also winning the Queens Gold Medal along with various other awards.

Jessie Mackay Award winners who became Poet Laureates include Cilla McQueen, Fleur Adcock, Michele Leggott, Vincent O’Sullivan, David Eggleton, Selina Tusitala Marsh, and Chris Tse.

Many became household names, such as Janet Frame, Maurice Shadbolt, Joy Cowley, James K Baxter, Maurice Gee, Alan Duff, Eleanor Catton, Catherine Chidgey, David Eggleton and Paula Morris. Several have been made NZ Arts Foundation Icons or Laureates. Many winners have received further recognition and support prestigious fellowships such as the Katherine Mansfield Menton Fellowship or the University of Otago Burns Fellowship.

A glance at the lists of winners (below) will show the many others for whom the Hubert Church and the Jessie Mackay Awards were just the start of a truly spectacular literary career. The awards have been a vital springboard for a significant proportion of this country’s finest authors, highlighting the value and importance of the awards. Award winners have continued to contribute to literary culture, as examples of excellence and the awards have successfully raised the profile of New Zealand books and authors.

And it all began with a prize.

_____ENDS_____

Download an abridged history of the Mackay-Church Awards brochure HERE

Research Essay by Dr Elaine Webster                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                      Dr Webster has published academic work, short fiction & poetry, and recently completed her second novel.

This research project was made possible with a grant from the Mātātuhi Foundation – with thanks

Notes:

Abbreviations

AFI: Arts Foundation Icon

L: Arts Foundation Laureate

PMA: Prime Minister’s Award for Contribution to Literature

PL: Poet Laureate

CBE: Commander of the Order of the British Empire

ONZ: Order of New Zealand

NZOM: Officer of the New Zealand Order of Merit

QM: Queen’s Gold Medal for Poetry

OA: Order of Australia

RSNZ: Fellow of Royal Society of New Zealand

CMG: Companion of the Order of St Michael and St George

DCNZM: Distinguished Companion of the New Zealand Order of Merit

MNZM: Member of New Zealand Order of Merit

NZOM: New Zealand Order of Merit

Sources:

PEN Gazette (PEN NZ Inc) 1937 to 1989

New Zealand Author (NZSA) 1989 to 1994

Book Awards Trust website 1996 to 2024

Wikipedia

Te Ara

National Library of New Zealand

READ NZ

Academy of New Zealand Literature

Arts Foundation of New Zealand

Author websites

Assorted publishing, booksellers, and media websites

Note on sources

The list of winners up to 1994 was compiled using the NZSA archives, and from 1996 Book Awards Trust website. Archival information was gleaned from PEN/NZSA annual reports and PEN Gazettes/ New Zealand Author.  Some gaps were filled with kind assistance by the National Library. Gaps remain. Some years no award was made; other years results were not reported or otherwise unavailable; some years the awards were not held. I relied on various online sources for information about writers careers and further achievements, listed below, and for which I record my gratitude.