Congratulations to Whiti Hereaka, who has won the $60,000 2022 Ockham Jann Medlicott Acorn Prize for Fiction announced on 11 May.

Her novel Kurangaituku is described by the judges as an epic poem of a novel, resonant of Māori oral traditions that gives a voice, form and name to the bird-woman from the myth ‘Hatupatu and the Bird-woman’. Whiti was a writer-in-residence at the Randell Cottage in 2007.