AUP's record in national book awards continues

For a fourth year Auckland University Press, a small publisher of scholarly non-fiction and poetry for the general market, has topped the list in New Zealand’s national book awards.

AUP has three finalist books and two best first book winners in the 2011 New Zealand Post Book Awards (NZPBA) lists announced today. This puts AUP equal with much larger publishers Penguin and Random House on the NZPBA shortlist and top of the NZ Society of Authors (NZSA) Best First Book winners list, having taken out two of the three categories.

The AUP finalists in the NZ Post Book Awards are spread across two of the four of the award categories:
• Poetry — Mauri Ola: Contemporary Polynesian Poems in English, Whetu Moana II edited by Albert Wendt, Reina Whaitiri and Robert Sullivan; and
• General Non-Fiction – Blue Smoke: The Lost Dawn of New Zealand Popular Music 1918–1964 by Chris Bourke, and No Fretful Sleeper: A Life of Bill Pearson by Paul Millar.

“The team at Auckland University Press are really thrilled to lead the field once more in the 2011 New Zealand Post Book Awards,” said Director Sam Elworthy.

“Each of our finalists was a big, ambitious book for the Press to take on: the many voices from across the Pacific gathered together in Mauri Ola; a big, revealing biography of a private and public man in No Fretful Sleeper; a decade of research and a photographic goldmine coming together in Blue Smoke.

“Working with great authors on such big ideas is what we like to do best at AUP and we congratulate our authors on their achievement.”

This is the fourth consecutive year that an AUP book has won the NZSA Jessie Mackay award for Best First Book of Poetry. It went to Wellington poet Lynn Jenner for her Dear Sweet Harry (whose manuscript also won the Adam Prize in Creative Writing).

“Lynn Jenner’s first collection Dear Sweet Harry grabbed us by the throat on first reading and never let go,” said AUP’s poetry editor Anna Hodge.

“Her poems and pieces are as impressive and death-defying and gratifying as the feats of her hero Houdini and his co-protagonists. And – for the fourth year in a row – AUP’s commitment to publishing new poets has been rewarded.”

The judging panel described Lynn Jenner’s collection as a “fascinating and quite original miscellany of lyric poems, short prose texts, historical-documentary material, and autobiographical personae – all gathered together around the historical figure of 'Dear Sweet Harry' Houdini, the exemplary escape artist and masterful illusionist.”

Dunedin academic Poia Rewi has won the NZSA E H McCormick Award for the Best First Book of Non-Fiction for his book Whaikorero: The World of Maori Oratory.

“Poia Rewi is set to become one of this country’s leading Maori scholars and we feel very lucky to have worked with Poia on his first book, a work of deep insight into Maori language, history and culture,” said Dr Elworthy.

The NZPBA judges found Rewi’s book “managed the difficult feat of being both a valuable record and manual of Maori oratory for practitioners, and an accessible overview for anyone interested in this ubiquitous cultural practice.”

The winners of the NZ Post Book Awards will be announced at an awards ceremony in Wellington on 27 July. The awards for Best First Books of Poetry, Fiction and Non-Fiction will be also be presented at that event.