Five writers with links to Dunedin are among the 2011 New Zealand Post Book Awards finalists, which will be announced today.
Dunedin writers Neville Peat, Dr Poia Rewi and Laurence Fearnley were all short-listed, while former residents Cilla McQueen and Tim Wilson, who now live in Bluff and the United States, respectively, were also named as finalists.
The winners will be announced on July 27.
The finalists are. -
Fiction: The Hut Builder, by Laurence Fearnley; The Night Book, by Charlotte Grimshaw; Their Faces Were Shining, by Tim Wilson.
Poetry: The Mirror of Simple Annihilated Souls, by Kate Camp; The Radio Room, by Cilla McQueen; Mauri Ola: Contemporary Polynesian Poems in English Whetu Moana II, by Albert Wendt, Reina Whaitiri and Robert Sullivan.
General non-fiction: 99 Ways into New Zealand Poetry, by Paula Green and Harry Ricketts; Blue Smoke: The Lost Dawn of NZ Popular Music 1918-1964, by Chris Bourke; Mune: An Autobiography, by Ian Mune; No Fretful Sleeper: A Life of Bill Pearson, by Paul Millar; The Tasman: Biography of an Ocean, by Neville Peat.
Illustrated non-fiction: Brian Brake: Lens on the World, by Athol McCredie; Pounamu, by Russell Beck, Maika Mason and Andris Apse; Still Life: Inside the Antarctic Huts of Scott and Shackleton, by Nigel Watson and Jane Ussher; The Dress Circle, by Douglas Lloyd Jenkins, Claire Regnault and Lucy Hammonds; The Passing World: The Passage of Life: John Hovell and the Art of Kowhaiwhai, by Dr Damian Skinner.
Dunedin-based Maori academic Dr Poia Rewi has been awarded the 2011 New Zealand Society of Authors E.H. McCormick Best First Book Award for Non-Fiction for Whaikerero: The World of Maori Oratory.
