A shortlist of six unpublished manuscripts has been announced for the $5,000 Richard Webster Popular Fiction Award.

The finalists are Sue Emms (pictured) for The Kindred Stone, Rhonda Bartle (The Lie of the Land) , Zana Bell (Fetters and Fate), M. J. Cartledge (Experiments with Time and Truth), David Rawson (The Atacama Crystal) and Amy Talbot (A Deadly Affair).

According to the Hazard Press web site, this award has been running since 2000 and is designed to promote New Zealand’s popular fiction writers.

The purpose of the award is to acknowledge the quality of popular fiction writing in this country and to encourage booksellers to place New Zealand popular fiction on their mass-market shelves. Should the winning manuscript proceed to publication Hazard Press will be submitting it to overseas publishers in the hope of selling international rights for the book, thereby promoting New Zealand popular fiction not only in New Zealand but to the rest of the world.

Entries are now open for the 2004 award and the closing date is 31 June. Full details are here.

NB: Richard Webster, the main sponsor of the award, is a Kiwi ‘New Age’ writer whose first work of popular fiction, Enemy Within was published by Hazard.