NZ Post Book Awards

Congratulations to Judith Binney, Brian Turner, Al Brown, and Alison Wong, who all feature in the New Zealand Post Book Awards.

Dame Judith Binney's Encircled Lands is NZ Post Book of the Year.  The convoluted and engrossing story of Tuhoe's quest for self-government of their lands, Encircled Lands, is, in the opinion of book awards judge Paul Diamond, an exhaustive, comprehensive history of the Urewera that "would profoundly change our understanding of our shared history."

He said it revealed "an almost unknown history to a new audience," at the same time delineating the history of the Tuhoe struggle in a fashion that would resonate through the years.

Other winners were:

Wellington debut novelist Alison Wong, who won the fiction category for As the Earth Turns Silver, bringing "a powerful new voice and new themes to New Zealand fiction."

Brian Turner, famous for his passion for the gold and indigo landscapes of Central Otago, won the poetry prize for his collection Just This.

Al Brown, co-founder of Wellington's iconic restaurant, Logan Brown (memorable for its bar counter, which is a shallow aquarium), won the illustrated nonfiction category, as well as the Readers' Choice award, for Go Fish: Recipes and Stories from the New Zealand Coast.