A new book prize – The Judith Binney Best First Book
Award for Illustrated Non-Fiction - will be presented at the Ockham New
Zealand Book Awards this year.
The award, named in honour of the late historian, Dame
Judith Binney, brings the total of Best First Book awards being presented to
four, the other three being The Jessie Mackay Award for Poetry, The Hubert
Church Award for Fiction and The E H McCormick Award for General Non-Fiction.
The new award is inaugurated in the same year that Tangata
Whenua: An Illustrated History, written by Judith Binney, Atholl Anderson
and Aroha Harris, is a finalist in the 2016 Ockham New Zealand Book Awards
Illustrated Non-Fiction open category.
Judith Binney’s literary executor, Bridget Williams, is
particularly delighted that this award acknowledges a ‘best first book’, as
Judith Binney’s contribution to the writing of New Zealand history began in her
twenties with a ground-breaking book – The Legacy of Guilt: A Life of Thomas
Kendall (1968) – that went on to win the F. P. Wilson Award for historical
writing.
“To date there has only been one Best
First Book award for non-fiction,” says New Zealand Book Awards Trust chair
Nicola Legat. “We felt that it was high time that two non-fiction writers of
first books had the chance to win a prize, given that there are two non-fiction
categories in the open awards. Naming it for Dame Judith Binney will each year
connect a writer to a great and powerful legacy.”
Judith Binney’s other books include: Mihaia: The Prophet
Rua Kenana and His Community at Maungapohatu (with Gillian Chaplin and
Craig Wallace); Nga Morehu: The Survivors (with Gillian Chaplin); Redemption
Songs: A Life of Te Kooti Arikirangi Te Turuki, winner of the Montana New
Zealand Book of the Year Award; The Shaping of History: Essays from the New
Zealand Journal of History; Encircled
Lands: Te Urewera 1820–1921,
winner of the NZ Post Book of the Year Award, and Stories Without
End: Essays 1975–2010.
In her last years, Dame Judith, who died in 2011, was
Professor Emeritus of the University of Auckland, where she had taught for
several decades. She was made a Distinguished Companion of the New Zealand
Order of Merit in 2006, and honoured with the Prime Minister’s Award the same
year. In 2009 Dame Judith was acknowledged by Ngai Tuhoe, when the name Te
Tomairangi o te Aroha was bestowed at the Urewera launch of Encircled Lands.
She was a Fellow of the Royal Society of New Zealand and an inaugural Fellow of
the New Zealand Academy of Humanities.
The winner of the Judith Binney Best First Book Award for
Illustrated Non-Fiction will be announced with all the 2016 Ockham New
Zealand Book Awards winners at a ceremony at the Auckland Town Hall on Tuesday
10 May at 7.00pm.
For more information and for tickets to the event go here: http://www.writersfestival.co.nz/programmes/event/ockham-new-zealand-book-awards/8011/
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