The largesse at the Arts Foundation is truly exceptional this year: they've just this minute announced the recipients of the inaugural 2006 New Generation Awards, which takes their award moolah across all programmes to a rather princely sum of $395,000.

The five $25,000 prizes are donated by the Freemasons, and given to five artists who have 'demonstrated excellence in the early stages of their careers'.

So, stand up Eve Armstrong, Visual Artist; Warren Maxwell, Composer; Tze Ming Mok (pictured), Fiction Writer; Joe Sheehan, Stone Artist and Jeweller; and Taika Waititi, Actor/Writer/Film Director.

Good to see a writer in there: Aucklander Tze Ming Mok has had her poetry, fiction, reviews, features and opinions published in Landfall, JAAM, Sport, The Listener and the Sunday Star Times. Her short story Daily Special also appears in The Best New Zealand Fiction Volume 2 and her poem An Arabic Poetry lesson in Jakarta was selected as one of the Best New Zealand poems in 2004. And just to cap it all, in 2007 she is taking up the Creative New Zealand Red Gate residency in Beijing. You go, girl.