Ingrid Horrocks
Ingrid Horrocks won the Jann Medlicott Acorn Prize for Fiction 2026 for her beautiful book of linked short stories All Her Lives (2025). She is also the author of the memoir Where We Swim (2021), and two collections of poetry. Her writing has appeared in Lithub, The Ninth Letter, The Sydney Review of Books, The Spinoff, Landfall, and the Guardian. In 2024 she was the Kaituhi Tarāwhare CNZ Writer in Residence at the International Institute of Modern Letters (IIML) and in 2025 she was awarded the Michael King Writers Centre Australian Residency at Varuna. She lives in Te Whanganui-a-Tara, Wellington.
2026 festival sessions
All Her Lives
Ingrid Horrocks in conversation with Naomi Arnold
2pm-3pm, Saturday 25 July, Whitehaven Theatre Marlborough, $25
Ingrid discusses All Her Lives, her Ockham Award winning collection of linked short stories about nine women, and her creative non-fiction writing, which also centres on women's experiences. The characters in All Her Lives are returning post-war to a family farm in Wairarapa, preparing for a nuclear-free protest in Devonport, and getting by in a leaky Wellington flat. Each story captures a moment of change or challenge. Two of the stories feature Mary Wollstonecraft, one of the earliest voices for women’s rights. Ingrid shares the path that led her here — including research about early women travellers, and writing that blends the boundaries of history, travel, nature and memoir. Sure to be a fascinating conversation and a timely reminder that progress, especially for women, isn’t something to take for granted.