The NZ book awards season has really kicked off in earnest today, but alongside the grown-up awards (The Ockhams) generating a lot of talkonline, it's also the day that both the Storyline Notable Books 2020 and the Storylines manuscript award finalists have been announced! We've pulled together a list of all of the manuscript finalists in one place – these are writers to watch out for in the future. For more details on each category, there are links to the Storylines website.

It's the final instalment of our NZCYA finalist coverage for 2019! Our final category is the Wright Family Foundation Te Kura Pounamu Award for Te Reo Māori. When she's not busy being a Sapling editor or a bookseller at Little Unity, Briar Lawry is also an enthusiastic akonga i te reo Māori. So for this category, she took matters into her own hands and assessed Te Hīnga Ake A Māui I Te Ika Whenua, Te Haka A Tānerore and Ngā Whetū Matariki I Whānakotia – with some help from he

The Young Adult finalists in the NZCYA Awards encompass a variety of approaches to fantasy, a touch of dystopia, political intrigue and coming of age storytelling. The Young Adult category also happens to be one where the target demographic is full of some super talented writers. So we asked a couple of Toitoi Journal-ists – alumnae of the celebrated children's literary journal – to provide us with their reviews. Here's what Stella Weston and Tasmyn Kibblewhite shared with us

This year's NZCYA Awards coverage kicks off with the Best First Book finalists! We asked them to tell us, in their own words and with their own spin, about a book that was integral to their childhoods. Here's what they shared with us. James T. Guthrie, finalist for Bullseye Bella (Scholastic) The earliest book I can think of that made a deep and lasting impression on me, which changed the way I thought about books and reading and shaped the choices I would make in my reading

How does an author not only get their book published, but get their book shortlisted for the Best First Book award? We asked each of this year's finalists how they went from unpublished amateur to finalist. Eileen Merriman, finalist for Pieces of You (Penguin Random House) Everyone always asks how I can possibly find time to write, but for me it’s a compulsion. I stopped writing when I went to university and didn’t start again until almost twenty years and several exams later

Fantasy and science fiction writer Karen Healey reckons that the national book awards, the NZ Book Awards, are erroneously named. Why not the the New Zealand Adult Literary Fiction, Non-Fiction and Poetry Awards? For that's what they are, she argues. So. Here’s something I reckon we need to change. The Spinoff recently printed a list of 50 years of book awards in New Zealand, based on the national book awards* and purporting to celebrate the 'rich, fascinating history of New