You turn your back for a weekend and all hell breaks loose in the wild world of NZ lit. I’m going to have to sandwich a couple of things together so I don’t lose the plot. I’ll call it Wellington news:

The 2006 Prize in Modern Letters shortlist has just been announced – it’ll be the third time that one of six New Zealand writers will get the chance to win the a big fat $65K, the biggest Prize globally for an emerging writer. It’s run by the IIML at Victoria and personally funded by Glenn Schaeffer, the US literary activist who founded the International Institute of Modern Letters at Victoria in 2001. I’ll tell you in just a minute who’s on that list.

The second big Wellington news is that the fresh spring taster for Sport 33 (above) is now online, with some yummy samples including Damien Wilkins’ introduction to Great Sporting Moments. Did you see Fergus Barrowman on Frontseat last Sunday, incidentally? He was great, and that programme is brilliant (and a very sexy website too). But hey – NZ lit on the telly? More, please – but move it to an earlier slot, and for heaven's sake give them the funding to do it again next year.

The new issue of Sport magazine will be out in all good bookshops on 19 November, and the aforementioned Great Sporting Moments, (the bumper book of the best of Sport) will be out next week. Our lovely guest reviewer, Louise Wareham, is reading it at the moment and will be along with a review any time soon.

Which brings me nicely back to that shortlist… because, to our great pride, she’s on it!

The other writers are:

Tusiata Avia, Wild Dogs under My Skirt (2004)
William Brandt, Alpha Male (1999) and The Book of the Film of the Story of My Life (2002)
Kate Camp, Unfamiliar Legends of the Stars (1998), Realia (2001)
Jo Randerson, The Spit Children (2000) and The Keys to Hell (2004)
Carl Shuker, The Method Actors (2005); and of course,
Louise, with Since You Ask (2004).
Congratulations to all of you from LeafSalon.

The shortlist was decided by Professor Bill Manhire (convenor), broadcaster Elizabeth Alley, Dominion Post books editor Guy Somerset, and novelist and IIML lecturer, Damien Wilkins.

Here are some info snippets provided by the press release:

• Kate Camp and Tusiata Avia are both poets, while the remaining four shortlistees are fiction writers.
• Jo Randerson is shortlisted for her two collections of short fiction, but is also well known for her work in the theatre.
• Three writers – Tusiata Avia, Carl Shuker, and Louise Wareham – have made the shortlist on the basis of one published book only.
• Half of the shortlisted writers have already been published outside New Zealand. The novels by Louise Wareham and Carl Shuker both come from small American literary publishers, while William Brandt’s The Book of the Film of the Story of My Life has been published in the UK and the USA as well as in New Zealand.
• Two of the shortlisted finalists – William Brandt and Kate Camp – were also finalists in 2004.

The finalists’ books will now go forward to be read by a panel of American jurors. The winner will be announced at a special session of Writers and Readers Week at the New Zealand International Arts Festival in March 2006.

Bill Manhire said

The jurors are going to have to work quite hard … There are six authors here, and they are very, very different from one another. One of the really healthy things about the shortlist, and about contemporary New Zealand writing in general, is the range of things being attempted.

Bit like myself, really – am now going to vaccuum like a madwoman, make pasta sauce, speed to school for parent/teacher interviews, take small children pony riding, try to catch some chickens, do the bed/bath routine, and finally drink large amounts of bubbly with twenty of my closest friends for my birthday. I constantly amaze myself, actually. Hooray for moi!

Hey - it's my website, and I'll hooray if I want to.