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New Zealand Book Awards
The Ockham New Zealand Book Awards are literary awards presented annually in New Zealand. The awards began in 1996 as the merger of two literary awards events: the New Zealand Book Awards, which ran from 1976 to 1995, and the Goodman Fielder Wattie Book Awards, which ran from 1968 to 1995 (known as the Montana Book Awards from 1994 to 1995). The awards have changed name several times depending on sponsorship. From 1996 to 2009, the awards were known as the Montana New Zealand Book Awards, and sponsored by Montana Wines. From 2010 until 2014, the awards were known as the New Zealand Post Book Awards. Since 2015, the main sponsors have been property developer Ockham Residential, the Acorn Foundation, Creative New Zealand, Mary and Peter Biggs, Booksellers Aotearoa New Zealand and biotech company MitoQ. The awards event is the opening event of the Auckland Writers Festival, held annually in May. History and format Before 1996 there were two major New Zealand literary awards ev ...
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New Zealand
New Zealand ( mi, Aotearoa ) is an island country in the southwestern Pacific Ocean. It consists of two main landmasses—the North Island () and the South Island ()—and over 700 smaller islands. It is the sixth-largest island country by area, covering . New Zealand is about east of Australia across the Tasman Sea and south of the islands of New Caledonia, Fiji, and Tonga. The country's varied topography and sharp mountain peaks, including the Southern Alps, owe much to tectonic uplift and volcanic eruptions. New Zealand's capital city is Wellington, and its most populous city is Auckland. The islands of New Zealand were the last large habitable land to be settled by humans. Between about 1280 and 1350, Polynesians began to settle in the islands and then developed a distinctive Māori culture. In 1642, the Dutch explorer Abel Tasman became the first European to sight and record New Zealand. In 1840, representatives of the United Kingdom and Māori chiefs ...
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Airini Beautrais
Airini Jane Beautrais (born 1982) is a poet and short-story writer from New Zealand. Background Beautrais was born in 1982 and grew up in Auckland and Whanganui. She studied creative writing and ecological science at the Victoria University of Wellington. In 2016 she received her PhD in Creative Writing from the International Institute of Modern Letters, under doctoral advisors Harry Ricketts and James Brown. , Beautrais lives in Whanganui with her two sons. Works Beautrais's writing draws on her personal experiences, and is often set in her hometown of Whanganui. Beautrais has published four collections of poetry with Victoria University Press: ''Secret Heart'' (2006); ''Western Line'' (2011); ''Dear Neil Roberts'' (VUP, 2014); and ''Flow: Whanganui River Poems'' (2017). In 2020 Victoria University Press published a collection of her short stories, titled ''Bug Week & Other Stories.'' The collection had taken her ten years to write, and she has said it was inspired by "th ...
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Kirsty Gunn
Kirsty Gunn (born 1960, New Zealand) is a novelist and writer of short stories. Her stories include "Rain", which led to the 2001 film of the same name, directed by Christine Jeffs and also the 2001 ballet by the Rosas Company, set to "Music for Eighteen Musicians" a 1976 score by Steve Reich. Her novel ''The Boy and the Sea'' won the Scottish Arts Council Book of the Year award in 2007. Her 2012 novel "The Big Music" won the Book of the Year in the 2013 New Zealand Post Book Awards. The novel took seven years to write, and was inspired by pibroch, the classical music of the Great Highland Bagpipe. She is professor of writing practice at the University of Dundee. Bibliography * 1994 : ''Rain'' * 1997 : ''The Keepsake'' * 1999 : ''This Place You Return To Is Home'' * 2002 : ''Featherstone'' * 2006 : ''The Boy and the Sea'' * 2007 : ''44 Things'' * 2012 : ''The Big Music'' * 2014 : ''Infidelities'' * 2015 : ''My Katherine Mansfield Project'' * 2016 : ''Going Bush'' * ...
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The Luminaries
''The Luminaries'' is a 2013 novel by Eleanor Catton. Set in New Zealand's South Island in 1866, the novel follows Walter Moody, a prospector who travels to the West Coast settlement of Hokitika to make his fortune on the goldfields. Instead, he stumbles into a tense meeting between twelve local men, and is drawn into a complex mystery involving a series of unsolved crimes. The novel's complex structure is based on the system of Western astrology, with each of the twelve local men representing one of the twelve signs of the zodiac, and with another set of characters representing planets in the solar system. The novel has won many awards and honours, including the 2013 Booker Prize. It was adapted into the BBC/ TVNZ miniseries ''The Luminaries'' in 2020. In 2022, it was included on the "Big Jubilee Read" list of 70 books by Commonwealth authors, selected to celebrate the Platinum Jubilee of Elizabeth II. Plot The story begins with one of the book's protagonists, Walter Moo ...
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Eleanor Catton
Eleanor Catton (born 24 September 1985) is a New Zealand novelist and screenwriter. Born in Canada, Catton moved to New Zealand as a child and grew up in Christchurch. She completed a master's degree in creative writing at the International Institute of Modern Letters. Her award-winning debut novel, '' The Rehearsal'', written as her Master's thesis, was published in 2008, and has been adapted into a 2016 film of the same name. Her second novel, ''The Luminaries'', won the 2013 Booker Prize, making Catton the youngest author ever to win the prize (at age 28) and only the second New Zealander. It was subsequently adapted into a television miniseries, with Catton as screenwriter. Early life Catton was born in Canada, where her father was a graduate student completing his doctorate at the University of Western Ontario on a Commonwealth scholarship. Her mother Judith is a New Zealander from Canterbury, while her father, philosopher Philip Catton, comes from Washington State. Her ...
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Text Publishing
Text Publishing is an independent Australian publisher of fiction and non-fiction, based in Melbourne, Victoria (Australia), Victoria. Company background Text Media was founded in Melbourne in 1990 by Diana Gribble and Eric Beecher, along with designer Chong Weng Ho and others, with a small book publishing division known as Text Publishing. Michael Heyward joined in 1992, and the small publishing house became independent in 1994. When Text Media was taken over by Fairfax Media in 2004, Michael Heyward and his wife Penny Hueston entered into a joint venture with Scottish publisher Canongate. Maureen and Tony Wheeler, founders of Lonely Planet, bought Canongate's share in Text in 2011, making it a wholly Australian-owned company. In 2012, Text launched a series of Australian classics, republishing out of print works that had been, for the most part, lost to literary history. People As of August 2022, Heyward was the publisher. Awards Text awards The Text Prize for Young A ...
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Stephen Daisley
Stephen Daisley (born 1955) is a New Zealand novelist. Daisley won the 2011 Prime Minister's Literary Award for Fiction for his novel ''Traitor'' and the Ockham New Zealand Book Award, 2016, for his second novel ''Coming Rain.'' Biography He was born in New Zealand and spent five years in the New Zealand army before working as a sheep herder, bush cutter, truck driver, construction worker and bartender. He now lives in Perth, Western Australia. Bibliography Novels * ''Traitor'' (2010) * ''Coming Rain'' (2015) Awards * 2011 winner Prime Minister's Literary Awards — Fiction – ''Traitor'' * 2011 winner New South Wales Premier's Literary Awards — UTS Award for New Writing – ''Traitor'' * 2011 shortlisted New South Wales Premier's Literary Awards — Christina Stead Prize for Fiction – ''Traitor'' * 2011 shortlisted Commonwealth Writers Prize South East Asia and South Pacific Region — Best First Book – ''Traitor'' * 2010 shortlisted Western Australian Premier ...
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Catherine Chidgey
Catherine Chidgey (born 8 April 1970) is a New Zealand novelist, short-story writer and university lecturer. Her honours include the inaugural Prize in Modern Letters; the Katherine Mansfield Fellowship to Menton, France; Best First Book at both the New Zealand Book Awards and the Commonwealth Writers' Prize (South East Asia and Pacific Region); the Acorn Foundation Fiction Prize at the Ockham New Zealand Book Awards; and the Janet Frame Fiction Prize. Early life and family Chidgey was born in Auckland and grew up in the Hutt Valley. At Victoria University of Wellington she completed a BSc in Psychology, and a BA in German Language and Literature. In 1993 she was awarded a German Academic Exchange Service scholarship to study at the Freie Universität Berlin. She returned to Victoria University in 1997 to complete an MA in Creative Writing under Bill Manhire. she lives in Hamilton with her husband and daughter. Chidgey has explained that the 13-year gap between her third and f ...
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Pip Adam
Pip Adam is a novelist, short story writer, and reviewer from New Zealand. Background Adam was born in Christchurch, New Zealand. She attended the New Zealand Film and Television School in Christchurch before moving to Dunedin. Adam has an MA in Library and Information Studies and an MA in creative writing from Victoria University of Wellington. In 2012 she completed her PhD, also from Victoria University, supervised by Damien Wilkins (writer), Damien Wilkins. Adam lives with her partner, Brent McIntyre, and their son, Bo Adam, in Wellington. Works * ''Everything We Hoped For'' (2010) – short story collection * ''I'm Working On A Building'' (2013) – novel * ''The New Animals'' (2017) – novel * ''Nothing To See'' (2020) – novel Adam has been published in a number of literary journals including ''Overland'' (2015), ''takahē'' (2014), ''Fire Dials'' (2014), ''Sport'' (2008–2014), Landfall (journal), ''Landfall'' (2009, 2010), and ''Hue & Cry'' (2007–2013). Ad ...
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Penguin Random House
Penguin Random House LLC is an Anglo-American multinational corporation, multinational conglomerate (company), conglomerate publishing company formed on July 1, 2013, from the merger of Penguin Group and Random House. On April 2, 2020, Bertelsmann announced the completion of its purchase of Penguin Random House, which had been announced in December 2019, by buying Pearson plc's 25% ownership of the company. With that purchase, Bertelsmann became the sole owner of Penguin Random House. Bertelsmann's German-language publishing group Verlagsgruppe Random House will be completely integrated into Penguin Random House, adding 45 imprints to the company, for a total of 365 imprints. As of 2021, Penguin Random House employed about 10,000 people globally and published 15,000 titles annually under its 250 divisions and imprints. These titles include fiction and nonfiction for adults and children in both print and digital. Penguin Random House comprises Penguin and Random House in the U.S ...
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Vintage Books
Vintage Books is a trade paperback publishing imprint of Penguin Random House originally established by Alfred A. Knopf in 1954. The company was purchased by Random House in April 1960, and a British division was set up in 1990. After Random House merged with Bantam Doubleday Dell, Doubleday's Anchor Books trade paperback line was added to the same division as Vintage. Following Random House's merger with Penguin, Vintage was transferred to Penguin UK. In addition to publishing classic and contemporary works in paperback under the Vintage brand, the imprint also oversees the sub-imprints Bodley Head, Jonathan Cape, Chatto and Windus, Harvill Secker, Hogarth Press, Square Peg, and Yellow Jersey. Vintage began publishing some titles in the mass-market paperback format in 2003. Notable authors * William Faulkner * Vladimir Nabokov * Cormac McCarthy * Albert Camus * Ralph Ellison * Dashiell Hammett * William Styron * Philip Roth * Toni Morrison * Dave Eggers * Robert Caro * Har ...
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Fiona Kidman
Dame Fiona Judith Kidman ( Eakin, born 26 March 1940) is a New Zealand novelist, poet, scriptwriter and short story writer. She grew up in Northland, and worked as a librarian and a freelance journalist early in her career. She began writing novels in the late 1970s, with her works often featuring young women subverting society's expectations, inspired by her involvement in the women's liberation movement. Her first novel, ''A Breed of Women'' (1979), caused controversy for this reason but became a bestseller in New Zealand. Over the course of her career, Kidman has written eleven novels, seven short-story collections, two volumes of her memoirs and six collections of poetry. Her works explore women's lives and issues of social justice, and often feature historical settings. Kidman is an influential figure in New Zealand literature and has been active in New Zealand's literary community, including by serving as the president of the New Zealand Society of Authors and the New Z ...
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