Today’s The Day—the NZ Post Book Awards Will Be Decided!
Today is August 27—and that means that tonight the NZ Post Book Awards will be decided at a glittering (well, that’s the word the promo material uses anyway) gala event in Auckland. And to personalise it all, two of my friends, Bernadette Hall and Michael Harlow, are in the running for the NZ Post Book Award for Poetry.
Just to be even handed, I featured first Bernie and then Michael as my Tuesday Poets over the past two weeks. All three finalists, including former Te Mata Estate Poet Laureate, Brian Turner, were also featured on the Tuesday Poem hub on 30 July, NZ National Poetry Day.
Also in the running for the NZ Post Book Award for Fiction is Owen Marshall, for his short fiction collection, Living as a Moon (Vintage). Owen was my creative writing mentor a few years back, through the NZ Society of Author’s/Creative New Zealand programme, and is often spoken of as NZ’s foremost contemporary short fiction writer. But if Living as a Moon wins tonight it will be the first time Owen has won the fiction award for a short story collection. He has won previously, but for a novel, Harlequin Rex, in 2000.
The other contenders for the Fiction Award are Alison Wong, for As The Moon Turns Silver (Penguin) and Fiona Farrell’s Limestone (Vintage).
To check out the General Non-Fiction finalists, click here. The Illustrated Non-Fiction finalists are here.
And there’s a People’s Choice category as well, with Alison Wong’s As The Moon Turns Silver the popular front runner for this award. (Although she’s also many pundits’ pick for the overall Fiction award as well.)
But we’ll all just have to wait and see what tonight brings, won’t we?
Good luck to your friends and have fun!
I finished Thornspell btw and I loved it!
I have my fingers crossed for everyone for tonight–and am so glad that you enjoyed Thornspell. 🙂
I was surprised we had to wait till the main event for the poetry award to be announced this year, since it used to be announced on National Poetry Day
I think the powers-that-be decided that it was a bit anticlimactic to announce the Poetry winner separately and so far ahead of the others—and I must admit I am inclined to agree that poetry should have equal status ‘on the night.’ Must go now and see what’s happening—I believe Noel Murphy from the Bookcouncil is ‘tweeting’ the results.