Prime Minister’s Awards End an Historic Literary Month

October 22, 2013

Prime Minister’s Awards End an Historic Literary Month with a Bang

New Zealand authors will once again have reason to celebrate when three of the country’s finest authors are recognised for their huge contribution to New Zealand literature at the 2013 Prime Minister's awards for Literary Achievement.

Owen Marshall (fiction), Michele Leggott (poetry) and Martin Edmond (non-fiction) will each receive $60,000.

“It's always wonderful to see authors being celebrated," says Kyle Mewburn, President of the New Zealand Society of Authors. "And October has been an historic month for literary celebrations. Following Eleanor Catton's outstanding Man Booker Prize win and the announcement of the Laureates, the PM awards will end the month with an appropriately salutory bang by acknowledging the wonderful contribution to literature made by three of our finest writers."

Owen Marshall, a past president of honour of the N ZSA, is one of the country's best loved writers. His novels include Harlequin Rex (winner of the Deutz medal for fiction 2000) and The Larnachs (which was long-listed for the 2013 IMPAC Dublin Literary Award). He was made a Companion of the New Zealand Order of Merit (CNZM) for Services to Literature in 2012 and is currently adjunct professor at the University of Canterbury.

Award-winning poet, academic, essayist and editor, Michele Leggott has published seven books of poetry including Milk & Honey and Mirabile Dictu. She was the inaugural New Zealand Poet Laureate 2007-09 and is a Professor of English at Auckland University. In 2009 she was made a Member of the New Zealand Order of Merit for Services to Poetry.

Martin Edmond is the author of more than eight acclaimed non-fiction books, including The Autobiography of My Father and Chronicle of the Unsung, winner of the Biography category at the 2005 Montana Book Awards.

The NZSA also congratulates Canterbury writer Fiona Farrell, recipient of the 2013 Michael King Writer’s Fellowship during which she has worked on twin books - one fiction, one non-fiction - concerning the rebuilding of a damaged city.

ENDS

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