Grimshaw wins Montana honours

Charlotte Grimshaw is following in her father's literary footsteps, winning the Montana Medal for her book of short stories, Opportunity.

Grimshaw, daughter of CK Stead, scooped the $5000 fiction category and the $10,000 overall award.

The Aucklander is in Europe and her publisher accepted the prizes at the Montana New Zealand Book Awards in Wellington last night.

She also took out the reviewer of the year award for her reviews in the Listener magazine.

Her statement said: "Each story is written in the first person, and part of the point of the book is to describe and convey the unique New Zealand voice."

Judges, art critic and journalist Lynn Freeman, publisher David Elworthy and fiction writer Tim Corballis, said: "By turns touching, funny, dark, and redemptive, this is a book for reading through then re-reading in a different order ..."

Winners were chosen from more than 220 books. Mary McCallum, of Wellington, won the Society of Authors best first book and readers' choice award for her novel The Blue.

Janet Hunt won the Montana Medal for non-fiction and the environment category for Wetlands of New Zealand - A Bitter-Sweet Story.

Short story collection Te Tu a Te Toka: He Ieretanga no nga Tai e Wha won the $5000 inaugural Maori language prize for editors Piripi Walker and Huriana Raven.

WINNERS' LIST

The other category winners are:

Poetry: Cold Snack by Janet Charman.

Biography: The Life and Times of James Walter Chapman-Taylor by Judy Siers.

History: Te Tau Ihu O Te Waka Volume II: Te Ara Hou - The New Society by Hilary and John Mitchell.

Reference and anthology: A Nest of Singing Birds: 100 years of the New Zealand School Journal by Gregory O'Brien.

Lifestyle and contemporary culture: Mau Moko: The World of Maori Tattoo by Ngahuia Te Awekotuku with Linda Waimarie Nikora, Mohi Rua and Rolinda Karapu.

Illustrative: Bill Hammond: Jingle Jangle Morning by Jennifer Hay, with Ron Brownson, Chris Knox and Laurence Aberhart, designed by Aaron Beehre.

Best first book award for poetry: Incognito by Jessica Le Bas.

Best first book award for non-fiction: The Great Sacred Forest of Tane - Te Wao Tapu Nui a Tane: A Natural Pre-History of Aotearoa New Zealand by Alan Clarke.