{"id":425444,"date":"2026-05-13T10:35:11","date_gmt":"2026-05-13T10:35:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/425444\/"},"modified":"2026-05-13T10:35:11","modified_gmt":"2026-05-13T10:35:11","slug":"dame-jacinda-ardern-donates-ockham-new-zealand-book-awards-prize-money-to-literacy-charity","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/425444\/","title":{"rendered":"Dame Jacinda Ardern donates Ockham New Zealand Book Awards prize money to literacy charity"},"content":{"rendered":"

The charity delivers reading and writing programmes in schools and communities across the country.<\/p>\n

\u201cI hope this memoir felt as much a New Zealand story as it was my story,\u201d Louise Ardern read on her sister\u2019s behalf.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf its existence in the world means that just one reader goes on to pick up the baton of leadership or politics, then it would have all been worth it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ardern\u2019s memoir had been shortlisted for the main 2026 General Non-Fiction award, which was won by Tina Makereti\u2019s This Compulsion in Us. The other finalists were Peta Carey\u2019s The Hollows Boys: A Story of Three Brothers & the Fiordland Deer Recovery Era, and Naomi Arnold\u2019s Northbound: Four Seasons of Solitude on Te Araroa.<\/p>\n

\"DameDame Jacinda Ardern’s memoir A Different Kind of Power won the Best First Book General Non-Fiction Award.<\/p>\n

The General Non-Fiction category judges said good political memoirs and biographies were rare in New Zealand, but Ardern\u2019s A Different Kind of Power was \u201cexceptional\u201d. <\/p>\n

\u201cA singular figure with both national and global appeal, her time in office was marked by several catastrophic events, including the country\u2019s worst terror attack, the deadly White Island eruption, and the defining pandemic,\u201d the judges said.<\/p>\n

\u201cArdern\u2019s thoughtful and rewarding account sheds important light on those years, and on a Kiwi childhood that somehow inadvertently prepared her for the rigours of leadership.\u201d<\/p>\n

Yesterday, the Herald reported that Ardern would not be at tonight\u2019s ceremony<\/a> at the Aotea Centre\u2019s Kiri Te Kanawa Theatre.<\/p>\n

In his ReadingRoom newsletter, journalist Steve Braunias said he had received confirmation from the book award organisers that Ardern had prior commitments.<\/p>\n

\u201cRegrettably, Dame Jacinda Ardern is unable to attend the Ockham New Zealand Book Awards ceremony due to her attending an event in Australia about the release of her guide for teens, titled What If You Could, which was confirmed prior to A Different Kind of Power\u2019s Ockham\u2019s shortlisting.\u201d<\/p>\n

The 45-year-old was scheduled to appear at the Melbourne Writers Festival over the weekend, where she was promoting A Different Kind of Power.<\/p>\n

She will also be at the Auckland Writers Festival as a guest speaker on Sunday.<\/p>\n

Ardern was also announced as the winner of the People\u2019s Choice award earlier today, as voted by readers of Newsroom\u2019s ReadingRoom.<\/p>\n

A Different Kind of Power won 215 votes for best book of 2025, with runner-up Catherine Chidgey receiving 110 for her fiction title The Book of Guilt.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The charity delivers reading and writing programmes in schools and communities across the country. \u201cI hope this memoir…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":425445,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[169841,13176,10779,2108,1977,2947,19789,98756,71,13175,11228,300,117,111,43,139,69,217309,10512,61,3018,1533,80],"class_list":["post-425444","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-zealand","tag-169841","tag-ardern","tag-awards","tag-book","tag-charity","tag-dame","tag-donate","tag-donates","tag-from","tag-jacinda","tag-literacy","tag-money","tag-new","tag-new-zealand","tag-news","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-ockham","tag-prize","tag-to","tag-tonights","tag-will","tag-zealand"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/425444","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=425444"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/425444\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/425445"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=425444"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=425444"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=425444"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}