Three superhero writers from Aotearoa are awarded the 2025 Prime Minister's Award for Literary Achievement at a ceremony in Te Whanganui-a Tara Wellington. They are: Barbara Else MNZM for fiction, Ross Calman for non-fiction, and Dinah Hawken for poetry.

Kent Gardner, Chair of the Arts Council of New Zealand Toi Aotearoa hosts the event, at which Hon Paul Goldsmith, Minister for Arts, Culture & Heritage will present the awards on behalf of the Prime Minister.

“While most writing awards are tied to a specific piece of work, these awards recognise the writers as individual practitioners with successful careers in the literary sector. We’re celebrating bodies of work that are the result of years of application to the art and craft of writing,” Kent says.

“All the recipients have made sustained contributions to New Zealand literature and the sector and have been recognised internationally. They join a rollcall of extraordinary writers who are part of our wider artistic and creative landscape.”

“As well as recognising achievement, we hope these awards are an inspiration to other writers about how to make a career in the arts. And of course, we want people to read the recipients’ work.”

The award has been presented annually since 2003. It is managed by Creative New Zealand and decided by the Arts Council following public nominations and recommendations from an external panel of experts.

The panel for this year was Nick Bollinger, Witi Ihimaera, Paula Green, and Morrin Rout.

In 2025, Creative New Zealand received 82 nominations for 38 individual writers, 15 for fiction, 9 for non-fiction, and 14 for poetry.

Nominations are considered against three indicators.

• The nominee’s body of written work has received national acclaim.

• The nominee has received a major fellowship, residency, book award and/or international recognition.

• The nominee has displayed leadership in the New Zealand literary sector.

Each award comes with a payment of $60,000.

Barbara Else MNZM (Ōtepoti, Dunedin)

Barbara Else is the award-winning author of 13 novels, six for adults and seven for children. She has also written non-fiction, short stories and plays, a memoir, and works as an editor and literary consultant. Her honours include an MNZM for Services to Literature (2005), and the Margaret Mahy Medal for lifetime achievement and services to children’s literature (2016). She has an MA Hons in English Literature and Literary Criticism. Else’s children’s quartet Tales of Fontania (Gecko Press), won national and international awards, including the Esther Glen Medal for Best Children’s Novel (2012), an IBBY Award and a White Raven Award. Her non-fiction work for children, Go Girl - a storybook of epic NZ women (Penguin 2018), broke local sales records and was a finalist for the NZ Post Children’s Book Awards 2019. Else’s novels for adults include The Warrior Queen (Godwit 1995) and the historical novel Wild Latitudes (Vintage 2007). Her work for adults has been published internationally.

Ross Calman (Ngāti Toa, Ngāti Raukawa-ki-te-tonga, Kāi Tahu)

Ross Calman is an award-winning writer, historian, editor, researcher and te reo Māori translator. The author of more than a dozen works, his non-fiction book for young people, The Treaty of Waitangi (Oratia, 2025), was named The Margaret Mahy Book of the Year, and won the Elsie Locke Award for Non-fiction in the 2025 New Zealand Book Awards for Children and Young Adults. A descendant of Te Rauparaha, Calman is the editor and translator of He Pukapuka Tātaku i ngā Mahi a Te Rauparaha Nui – A Record of the Life of the Great Te Rauparaha (Auckland University Press, 2020). He also co-wrote and hosted the award-winning 2023 podcast ‘Te Rauparaha: Kei Wareware’. Over his long career, he has edited over 100 books in te reo Māori and English and translated a wide range of books into te reo Māori. In 2023 he was awarded an Honorary Doctor of Arts from the University of Canterbury in recognition for his work in the fields of Māori history and publishing, and in revitalising te reo Māori.

Dinah Hawken (Paekakariki, Kapiti Coast)

Dinah Hawken is one of New Zealand’s most critically acclaimed poets. She has published 10 collections of poetry, four of them finalists for the New Zealand Book Awards. Her work often features themes of the natural world and the experiences of women. Her first book of poetry, It Has No Sound and is Blue (Te Herenga Waka University Press, 1987), won the Commonwealth Poetry Prize for Best First Time Published Poet and her second book Small Stories of Devotion was published by Arc Publications in the UK. Hawken studied for a Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing at Brooklyn College, where her teachers included renowned poets John Ashbery and Sir Stephen Spender. She has worked as a physiotherapist, social worker, counsellor and teacher of creative writing, including at the International Institute of Modern Letters at Victoria University, where she taught a course called ‘Writing the Landscape’. In 2007 she received the Lauris Edmond Award for Distinguished Contribution to Poetry. Her poems have featured in collaborative projects with other artists, including sculptor John Edgar and the New Zealand String Quartet. Her latest work is Faces and Flowers: Poems for Patricia France (Te Herenga Waka University Press, 2024), a response to Dunedin artist Patricia France. A new book of poems Peace and Quiet is to be published in 2026.

Article originally published by CNZ.