Well, the ladies loomed large, so to speak, last night at the Montana Book Awards. One from leftfield first up: Annamarie Jagose with Slow Water took the Deutz Medal for Fiction – big shout out to Annamarie, she narrowly missed out on the Miles Franklin Award in Australia (she lost to some fine company there, and beat some of the same here – Peter Wells and Maurice Gee). A brilliant book, watch out for the review here soon.

According to the Herald today, friends had told Annamarie she was the dark horse, the wild card in the awards. Her response: ‘Darkness and wildness have a lot to recommend them.’ Grrrrr!

The Montana Medal for Non-Fiction and the History prize went to Dame Anne Salmond for The Trial of the Cannibal Dog: Captain Cook in the South Seas. She calls it her ‘Cook book’.

Anne Kennedy got the Poetry Prize with Sing-song; Rachel Barrowman best Biography with Mason: The Life of R A K Mason. NZSA Best First Book for fiction was won by Kelly Ana Morey (go girl!) for Bloom. Same award for non-fiction: Deidre Brown with Tai Tokerau Whakairo Rakau: Northland Maori wood Carving. And Leaf’s sincere congratulations to Joy Cowley for her well-deserved A W Reed Award for Contribution to New Zealand Literature.

However, lest I be branded a misterogynist (I know it’s not a word, but it should be), there were plenty of male winners too: naturally it was Central by Arno Gastieger that won the Illustrative category, although we thought Paste Up, the book on NZ Poster Art was quoite noice; and the Best First Book for Poetry was won by Cliff Fell for The Adulterers Bible.

And yes, our Michael was not, and never will be forgotten: he won the Reader’s Choice Award for The Penguin History of New Zealand by ‘an overwhelming majority’ of votes. He also won the Reviewer of the Year award. Sigh.

For the full listing of winners go to the Booksellers site and click on the 'winners' button.