RANDOM THOUGHTS ON THE MONTANA NZ BOOK AWARDS - WINNERS & LOSERS!

NZSA BEST FIRST FICTION AWARD

Rachael King's later father would have been so proud about this result. Good to see the family tradition being continued. Rachael has set herself a very hard act to follow with this win for her first published work.

Hopefully we will not have to wait too long before her next book as she told her audience at the Auckland Writers & Readers Festival in May that she was well into the research.



NZSA BEST FIRST BOOK POETRY

This had been announced last Friday on Montana Poetry Day and while it was won by Secret Heart by Airini Beautrais I reckon the other two shortlisted titles, Cup by Alison Wong and After the Dance by Michele Amas both had better designed covers. However this is not a cover competition!




NZSA BEST FIRST BOOK - NON-FICTION



A clear winner here with William Cottrell's fine book, Furniture in the New Zealand Colonial Era.







ILLUSTRATIVE CATEGORY


Having waxed lyrical on this blog about Eagle's Complete Trees & Shrubs of New Zealand I was not at all surprised when this title won both this category and also the Montana Medal for Non-Fiction making it in the view of the judges the outstanding non-fiction title published in New Zealand in 2006. Had I been a gambling man I would have bet the family farm on this result. . Congratulations again Audrey.You are a star.

ENVIRONMENT CATEGORY

Ghosts of Gondwana - George Gibbs. Nor arguement here.

LIFESTYLE & CONTEMPORARY CULTURE


While I was not surprised at the winner, Stitch: Contemporay New Zealand Textile Artists, by Ann Packer, (herself a longtime textile artist), I must admit great surprise at some of the titles that were not shortlisted. Two in particular that inexplicably missed out, coincidentally both from Random House's Godwit stable, were Christopher Johnstone's Landscape Paintings of New Zealand and Maps New Zealand



REFERENCE & ANTHOLOGY

Furniture of the New Zealand Colonial Era. This would have been a unanimous decision.

HISTORY CATEGORY

Another obvious winner - Vaka Moana

BIOGRAPHY CATEGORY

It must have been a very close contest here between the Lilburn & Beaglehole biographies.
A photo finish I suspect.

But spare a thought for the very fine third title in this category, Chris Price's Brief Lives, which one assumes ended up here because the organisers couldn't find anywhere else to put it!

After all while it does contain pieces of memoir it also includes a deal of poetry and short fiction. It is a fine, and unusual, piece of writing and publishing, but it didn't stand a chance in the biography section. This is an issue to which the organisers of these awards must pay some attention.

POETRY

Another category where they may have been surprise in some quarters at the shortlist omissions but no arguement over the winner, The Goose Bath by Janet Frame. The author's niece in accepting the prize thanked Bill Manhire for all his help referring to him as "literary statesman" a description Bookman Beattie warmly supports.

FICTION CATEGORY

And so to the big one !!

Well I guess with all the international acclaim including winning the hugely prestigious Commonwealth Writers Prize there wasn't really a lot of surprise when Lloyd Jones' Mr.Pip was announced the winner. I certainly wasn't surprised. Well-deserved lloyd.

What did surprised me enormously however, however was how the judges in naming two runners-up, did not include C.K.Stead's My Name Was Judas. They in effect said that Stead's book was either 4th or 5th in the shortlist. Astonishing. I was flabbergasted. I still am actually.

One final comment about this years fiction awards before I go.

I thought Lloyd Jones was less than gracious in his acceptance speeches - he also won the Montana Medal.

Okay Lloyd so we know in recent months you have been in Israel, Portugal, Australia , the Caribbean and perhaps other places too, and you must be tired and by now be fed up with talking about a book which you finished two years ago but this is your home and this is the biggest book bash of the year and you have just won the biggest prize so it wouldn't have hurt for you to have expressed a little more gratitude.I hope the sponsors were not as unhappy about your words as I was.

But now its time to start speculating about books being published this year. And with what has already been published along with the forthcoming publishing that I saw at the Book Trade Conference yesterday 2007 is shaping up to to be a real humdinger!