NZ PM’s Awards for Literary Achievement 2012 winners announced

The New Zealand Prime Minister’s Awards for Literary Achievement were announced on 26 November in Wellington.

Albert Wendt was awarded the prize for fiction, Sam Hunt was awarded the prize for poetry, and Greg O’Brien took out the prize for nonfiction.

Wendt, who was born in Samoa, is active in fostering literature among Pacific communities, reports Stuff.co.nz. His novel Sons for the Return Home was made into a film in 1979 and he has written novels, short stories and poetry during a career spanning five decades.

O’Brien, a Wellington-based writer, painter, poet and editor, has twice won the nonfiction prize at the New Zealand Post Book Awards for Children and Young People for Welcome to the South Seas (2004) and Back and Beyond (2008).

Auckland-based Hunt has had many of his poems set to music, and was made a Companion of the New Zealand Order of Merit for services to poetry in 2010.

Established in 2003, the New Zealand Prime Minister’s Awards for Literary Achievement are each worth NZ$60,000 (A$47,000). Winners are chosen by a panel following submissions from New Zealanders, who are asked to nominate an ‘outstanding writer who has made a significant contribution to New Zealand literature in nonfiction, poetry and fiction’.

Category: Local news