Airini Beautrais wins New Zealand’s Ockham fiction prize for short story collection Bug Week

Author, who usually writes poetry, beat two previous winners to the prestigious NZ$57,000 book award

A collection of short stories has won the top prize at the Ockham New Zealand book awards - only the second time a collection has won the fiction prize in the awards' history, and the first time in over a decade.

Airini Beautrais won the NZ$57,000 Jann Medlicott Acorn prize for fiction for her collection, Bug Week & Other Stories. Beautrais has published several books of poetry, but Bug Week is her first work of fiction. She was nominated alongside two previous winners of the award - Catherine Chidgey and Pip Adam - as well as a past nominee, Brannavan Gnanalingam.