Mākaro Press

Mākaro Press is an independent publisher in Aotearoa New Zealand, named Nielsen Book Publisher of the Year 2021. Mākaro put itself on the map with Auē by Becky Manawatu, a debut novel by a Māori writer that has captured New Zealanders’ imaginations as The Bone People and Once Were Warriors did before. It won the prestigious Jann Medlicott Acorn Prize 2020, was longlisted for the Dublin Literary Award and has been in the NZ fiction bestsellers list for two years. in 2022 Auē is being published in English worldwide by Scribe Publications and translated into half a dozen other languages.

Mākaro Press is a team of two: Mary McCallum and Paul Stewart, who founded the business in 2013 in Te Whanganui-a-Tara / Wellington. Paul won the Young Publisher of the Year Award in 2020.

Mākaro has shown its strength cultivating debut novelists, with its titles winning the MitoQ Best First Book of the Year for three years in a row 2019–2021 (two of those novels were also longlisted for the fiction prize), and titles by Indigenous writers, which include Becky Manawatu, and 92-year-old author Renée, who was awarded the Prime Minister’s Award for Literary Achievement and Ngā Tohu ā Tā Kingi Ihaka for a lifetime contribution to Māori arts.

Mākaro Press published a range of genres until 2020 when it shifted to publishing only one book of literary fiction per year. Its 2021 title Entanglement by Bryan Walpert is shortlisted for the Jann Medlicott Acorn Prize.