Shear Hard Work Reaps Major Book Award

A woman pioneer in the manly art of shearing has won a $35,000 prize to write about it.

Called Shear Hard Work, Hazel Riseborough was honoured with a CLL Writer’s Award at a ceremony held at Westhaven in Auckland tonight.

Riseborough was the nation’s first woman to complete a diploma in Wool Classing in 1953. In addition to topping the class, it took another decade before other women began following in her footsteps. She is uniquely placed to write about harvesting the nations clip; her first job was as a wool sorter and classer in Gore before going on to complete a PhD in history, eventually becoming a senior lecturer in New Zealand history at Massey University.

The book will recount more than a century of shearing in New Zealand in the words of the ‘old hands’ and of those engaged in the industry today.

CLL Writers’ Awards judges’ convenor, Jenny Jones says Riseborough’s projected history of shearing will fill a gaping hole in our literature.

‘The contribution of rural New Zealand to the nation’s prosperity is hard to overestimate yet there are few well-written and well-researched books about it. Shear Hard Work will help redress the balance and make the rural sector’s vitality and importance visible to the majority of the nation who live in towns.’

Philip Norman also won a $35,000 CLL Writer’s Award tonight for his work, From Summer School to the Olympics – the rise of New Zealand Composition 1946-2006.

This will be a companion volume to his Montana New Zealand Book Award winning biography of Douglas Lilburn. Philip Norman is a professional composer, musician and writer. He has composed more than 200 works and is the youngest person to have received a Citation for Services to New Zealand for Services to New Zealand Music.

Jenny Jones says Philip Norman has already proven he writes comprehensive, scholarly but accessible works.

‘The judging panel were unanimous in giving Philip Norman the award, having every confidence that an excellent, engaging work, thoroughly researched and stylishly written would result.’

Now in their seventh year, the CLL Writers’ Awards are financed from copyright licensing revenue collected by Copyright Licensing Limited (CLL) on behalf of authors and publishers.

A CLL Writer’s Award funded Jill Trevelyan’s critically acclaimed biography, Rita Angus published earlier this year and Lloyd Spencer Davis’ much-lauded work, Looking for Darwin. Last year’s CLL Writer’s Award winner, Stevan Eldred-Grigg’s work Diggers, Hatters and Whores: The New Zealand Gold Rush is published next month.

CLL/NZSA Research Grants – winners

Two new prizes were announced at tonight’s ceremony. CLL, in association with the New Zealand Society of Authors (NZSA) presented well known writer and film maker, Peter Wells with a grant toward a series of essays about William Colenso.

Tina Shaw, NZSA programme manager said Wells’s imaginative take on Colenso will be a rich opportunity for exploring all the missionary/founding father ambiguities of duty, enquiry and lust.

Simon Nathan won the inaugural Stout Grant toward a biography of James Hector.

‘James Hector is an important and influential figure and there is a gap in our history of a good biography of him,’ says Ms Shaw.

Both grants are valued at $3,500.

The CLL Writers’ Awards are held in association with NZ Book Month – a nationwide celebration of NZ books and writers through September 2008.