Congratulations to Tina Makereti, Randell Cottage Fellow in 2014, who has won the Ockhams General Non-Fiction award for This Compulsion in Us (published by Te Herenga Waka University Press). This follows upon her celebrated novel, The Mires and is her first book of non-fiction, a memoir about whakapapa, identity and growing up Pākehā.

General Non-Fiction category convenor of judges Philip Matthews describes This Compulsion in Us as an honest, revealing and stimulating work, and a celebration of writing as a timeless way of experiencing and understanding the world and ourselves.

He says, “Tina Makereti is better known as a writer of fiction, and she uses her well-honed literary skills to advantage in this artful and skilfully curated collection of essays, adding up to an alternative memoir of one person’s discoveries about her whakapapa and childhood family, and her place in national society and within Māori literature.”