Tuesday 27 October 2015

Prime Minister's Awards for Literary Achievment 2015

It's been a week of literary events as befitting NZ Book Week 2015 (26.10.15 to 1.11.15) and there's much still to come. Among these events are the launch tonight of Bob Kerr’s latest picture book/ story Changing Times at the Wellington Children’s Bookshop at Kilbirnie, at 6pm. Then also at the Wellington Children’s Bookshop this coming Saturday 31st October at 5pm  (Halloween and also BOOKSHOP DAY) is a double launch (Barbara Else’s The Knot Impossible and Paul Beavis’s Hello World!) surrounded by a party to celebrate Gecko Press’s 10th Birthday.



On Thursday last week I was off to the Prime Minister’s Awards for Literary Achievement which was held in the Grand Hall at Parliament House.  It was a privilege to see the writers been honoured (by the Hon. Maggie Barry Minister for Arts, Culture and Heritage) and to listen to their excellent speeches. A sofa or chair from which one could also see would have been good as the speeches as well as being excellent were quite long and lasted in total for over an hour. 


Those honoured were:

Social anthropologist Dame Joan Metge  (non-fiction)

Playwright Roger Hall  (fiction)

Roger Hall ( image NZ on Screen)
Poet Bernaadette Hall (poetry)

Bernadette Hall (photogapher untraced)







Martin Edmond (son of poet Lauris Edmond) was awarded the 2015 Creative New Zealand Michael King Writer’s Fellowship

Joan Metge  (photographer untraced)
Martin Edmond (Image Booksellers NZ)

The awards were established in 2003 and every year New Zealanders are invited to nominate a writer who has made a significant contribution to NZ Literature in the categories above. If they wish, writers may also nominate themselves for the awards…

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