Congratulations to Lee Murray, Professor Linda Tuhiwai Smith and Tusiata Avia for winning the 2023 Prime Minister’s Awards for Literary Achievement in fiction, non-fiction and poetry, respectively.
It was an honour to be at the Prime Minister’s awards to see these three amazing women get local recognition for their amazing work that has been embraced by the international community.
Not only is their work superb, but all three have donated significant amounts of time mentoring others, and the ceremony to celebrate that hard work was so much fun!
The question and answer session started with a whimsical and yet hard-hitting poem from Tusiata Avia and ended with a gorgeous extract from Lee Murray’s upcoming book, Fox Spirit on a Distant Cloud (Releases 1 Apr 2024)
Creative New Zealand Chair, Caren Rangi stood in for the PM and did an amazing job. As did all the organisers and the MC whose name I’ve sadly forgotten. I was sure I’d be able to get all the information from Creative New Zealand, but there’s nothing. I guess it should be no surprise that a party that is eroding human rights in New Zealand doesn’t care much for the arts, either.
But this was a lovely event, and all the more so in my opinion, as the elephant was not in the room. So here is the lovely Creative New Zealand Chair, Caren Rangi, presenting the prize for fiction to Lee Murray.
And another official photo, this one is theoretically of some of the Tauranga Writers Group (the oldest writers group in New Zealand) and me. I’m hiding at the back!
As part of Lee Murray’s entourage, I was so excited to see Lee Murray receiving her award, I took a very, very blurry photo. So this is an official one.
And no, I’m not part of that group, but Eileen Mueller (of the fiery hair and dragon books), Lee Murray and I were all part of Clarke’s Crit group. Imagine us as like Tolkien’s Inklings, but quieter and talking stories over cups of coffee and hot chocolate instead of beer.
So that was the awards from my perspective, I’d love to send you somewhere else for more, but nothing seems to be up yet. Soon hopefully. To find out more about the other winners, you can check out the Spinoff article, here and discover: “The most exciting Prime Minister’s Award list in years”
And if you want to find out more about Lee Murray’s books, please go here. Her new book, Fox Spirit on a Distant Cloud, will go up when it’s available.
Happy reading,
A.J. Ponder
