Ockham New Zealand Book Awards 2025: Damien Wilkins’ Delirious Wins the $65K Jann Medlicott Acorn Prize for Fiction
Wellington novelist Damien Wilkins bounded onto the Kiri Te Kanawa Theatre stage at Auckland’s Aotea Centre on 14 May 2025 to collect the $65,000 Jann Medlicott Acorn Prize for Fiction at the Ockham New Zealand Book Awards.
Judges hailed his eleventh novel (and fourteenth published book), Delirious, as a story that “flows elegantly across decades, threads the intricacies of relationship, and fathoms the ongoing evolution of a couple’s grief.” Fellow author Elizabeth Knox called it “funny, sharp, sad and profound … a masterpiece.”
Wilkins, director of Victoria University’s International Institute of Modern Letters, first claimed New Zealand’s top fiction honour in 1994 with The Miserables.
How the prize is funded
This year’s award marks nine years since the late Dr Jann Medlicott (1942 – 2022) began funding the prize through the Acorn Foundation. In 2016 she started underwriting the prize through regular donations (anonymously at first); in 2020 it was renamed in her honour.
Under Acorn’s Smarter Giving Model, Dr Medlicott built her fund in the years that followed and with only the investment returns used, the capital remains intact, and the prize can be awarded in perpetuity.
The Jann Medlicott Acorn Prize does more than crown a great book each year; it gives authors the financial breathing-space to craft their next work and amplifies Kiwi voices on the global stage. Past winners have leveraged the award into international publishing deals, proving that locally funded art can travel far.
Dr Jann Medlicott’s gift shows how lasting impact can begin close to home. By entrusting her endowment to Acorn here in Tauranga, she set up a fund that now underwrites the country’s leading fiction prize year after year. Each Ockham announcement is a quiet reminder of her foresight, proof that one carefully planned donation can nurture Aotearoa’s literary voice for generations.
Want to read the winner? Pick up Delirious at your local bookseller or library!