Warmest congratulations to PHANZA members Elizabeth Cox, Diana Morrow and Catherine Field-Dodgson, whose books have been selected on the long-list for the prestigious Ockham Book Awards 2026.
Elizabeth Cox’s book Mr Ward’s Map: Victorian Wellington Street by Street (Massey University Press) has been nominated for the BookHub Award for Illustrated Non-Fiction.
Mr Ward’s Map uses a remarkable large-scale map of Wellington made in 1891 by surveyor Thomas Ward, together with a wealth of historic images, to tell marvellous stories about a vital capital city, its neighbourhoods and its people at the turn of the twentieth century. Ward’s map recorded hotels, theatres, oyster saloons, brothels, shops, stables, Parliament, the remnants of Māori kāinga, the Town Belt, the prisons, the ‘lunatic asylum’, the hospital and much more, in detail so particular that it went right down to the level of the street lights.
Diana Morrow’s book Ruth Dallas: A Writer’s Life (Otago University Press) has been nominated in the General Non-fiction Award category.
Ruth Dallas (1919–2008) is one of Aotearoa New Zealand’s most respected and influential literary voices, and the internationally acclaimed author of nine poetry collections, a book of short stories and eight children’s books. Ruth Dallas: A Writer’s Life illuminates Dallas’s personal and professional relationships, describes major formative episodes in her life – including the traumatic loss of an eye as a teenager – and investigates her inspirations and creative process.
Catherine Field-Dodgson and co-author Michele Leggott’s book Groundwork: The Art and Writing of Emily Cumming Harris (Te Papa Press) has been nominated for the BookHub Award for Illustrated Non-Fiction.
Groundwork, described as “part inspired creative endeavour and part determined detective work”, brings to light one of New Zealand’s most significant botanical artists of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Just as Emily Harris’s beautiful paintings occupy a liminal space between scientific botanical illustration and art, so this book occupies a shifting ground between biography and imagineered monograph.
Find more information or purchase these books at the publishers’ websites:
Mr Ward’s Map: Victorian Wellington Street by Street https://www.masseypress.ac.nz/books/mr-ward-s-map
Ruth Dallas: A Writer’s Life
https://oup.nz/library/ruth-dallas/
Groundwork: The Art and Writing of Emily Cumming Harris
https://www.tepapa.govt.nz/about/te-papa-press/groundwork-the-art-and-writing-of-emily-cumming-harris