Mākaro Press : Nielsen Book Publisher of the Year 2021
Our publisher, Paul Stewart: NZ Young Publisher of the Year 2020

An independent publisher in Aotearoa New Zealand, we take our name from Mākaro Island which is in Te Whanganui-a-Tara just across from Eastbourne – our tūrangawaewae, the place we stand, and where we began publishing in 2013.

Mākaro and Matiu were the nieces of the great explorer Kupe, travelling with him from Hawaiki to New Zealand in the tenth century. He named the two Wellington harbour islands after them. Little is known of these women but we think of them as being – like all exceptional travellers – imaginative, curious and courageous. Perfect touchstones for publishing in the digital era.

We are currently only publishing one work of New Zealand literary fiction each year. 

Entanglement by Bryan Walpert (2021) has been shortlisted for the Jann Medlicott Acorn Prize for Fiction 2022.

Victory Park by Rachel Kerr (2020) won the MitoQ Best First Book Award for Fiction 2021.

Auē by Becky Manawatu (2019) won the Jann Medlicott Acorn Prize for Fiction, the MitoQ Best First Book Award for Fiction 2020 and the Ngaio Marsh Award for Best Crime Novel, and is being published in the US, the UK and Australia by Scribe. Translation rights have been sold to publishers in France, Turkey, Bulgaria, Argentina and Uruguay.

The Sound of Breaking Glass by Kirsten Warner (2018) won the MitoQ Best First Book Award for Fiction 2019.

Up to 2020, we published a range of fiction, as well as poetry, children’s books, memoir, biography and journalism, including those under our Submarine imprint – books where authors contribute towards the costs of publication. 

For rights to Mākaro titles please contact High Spot Literary.
For rights to Mākaro children’s books please contact us directly, and our contact at the Bologna Children’s Book Fair is Sophie Siers of Millwood Press. 
New Zealand booksellers, our distributors are David Bateman. 

Read the story of Mākaro Press here. 

Publishers Mary McCallum and Paul Stewart
at the 2015 New Zealand Book Awards for Children and Young Adults at
Government House, Wellington, New Zealand.