The future of the country’s premier book honours - the New
Zealand Book Awards - is now firmly secured, thanks to sponsorship from Ockham
Residential, an Auckland urban development company widely considered to be one
of the city’s most innovative and distinctive developers.
The newly minted partnership provides the financial
underpinning required for the prestigious literary awards to flourish,
alongside support from the Auckland Writers Festival which will produce and
showcase the awards event.
Entries to the 2016 Ockham New Zealand Book Awards open
today via http://booksellers.co.nz/awards/new-zealand-book-awards/submissions
. Books published between June 1 2014 and December 31 2015 are eligible for
entry.
Ockham Residential co-founder and director, Mark Todd, says
there are strong synergies between the Book Awards’ aims and Ockham’s
philosophy.
“We set up the Ockham Foundation, an education-focussed
charity, concurrently with our commercial development company. Right from the
start, we knew we wanted to operate a business that had ambitions wider than
profitability. Original thinking and critical thought are two key elements of
public discourse we wished to promote by way of education.
“Currently we are working with the University of Auckland to
fund First Foundation Scholars studying science and we are funding two
postgraduate scholarships in Statistics. We recently funded an outdoor
classroom and nature trail at Grey Lynn Primary School.
“Partnering with the New Zealand Book Awards in their
pursuit of critical thought, creativity and literary excellence is a great fit
for us,” says Mr Todd.
Established in 2009 by Mark Todd and Ben Preston, Ockham
Residential has completed in excess of $140million of market-leading
residential developments on the Auckland isthmus and has a further $110 million
of development in the planning stage or under construction.
Their sponsorship announcement comes just weeks after the
announcement of a $50,000 prize for the top adult fiction work each year, to be
provided by Tauranga community organisation, the Acorn Foundation, on behalf of
one of its donors.
New Zealand Book Awards Trust chairwoman, Nicola Legat, says
Ockham Residential is a truly outstanding sponsor.
“To have an organisation so philosophically aligned to the
awards makes for a robust and rewarding partnership for us all. We look forward
to a long and happy association.”
The New Zealand Book Awards winners will be announced at an
event during the country’s largest literary gathering - the Auckland Writers
Festival - in May 2016. As part of its awards sponsorship, Ockham also joins
the suite of Auckland Writers Festival gold partners.
“It is so heartening when businesses recognise the value of
working with the literary arts,” says Festival Director Anne O’Brien.
“The Auckland Writers Festival attracts some of New
Zealand’s and the world’s biggest writing names. With attendance growing
exponentially year-on-year (more than 62,000 in 2015), we are a future-focussed
marquee proposition for businesses.”
There are four main awards categories: Fiction,
Poetry, General Non-Fiction and Illustrated Non-Fiction and, should there be
sufficient entries, a Māori Language category. Three Best First Book Awards are
also given.
Each category will be overseen by specialist judges, three
per category, plus a Māori language adviser for the Māori language award.
The judges will select a long-list of around eight books in
each category, which will be announced on November 25 2015. The shortlist of
four books in each of the categories will be announced in early March
2016.
No comments:
Post a Comment