Finalists announced in Montana Book Awards

11.30 am

The finalists for the country's leading book awards, the 2001 Montana New Zealand Book Awards have been announced today.

The list of twenty finalists was selected from nearly 180 entries by the three-person judging panel comprising Radio New Zealand chief executive Sharon Crosbie, author and lecturer Lawrence Jones and Wellington bookseller Tilly Lloyd.

Ms Crosbie said the judges had been confronted with a wealth of books but had managed to arrive at the shortlist with "a high degree of amiability".

"I suspect though that naming the winners will require a great deal of genteel wrist wrestling and, as the saying goes, some who go in Popes will come out Cardinals. We have a difficult task ahead."

The winners will be announced on July 31 in Napier.

Finalists:

Fiction: Belief, Stephanie Johnson (Vintage); Nineteen Widows Under Ash, Damien Wilkins (Victoria University Press); Room, Laurence Fearnley (Victoria University Press); The Book of Fame, Lloyd Jones (Penguin Books); The Curative, Charlotte Randall (Penguin Books).

Poetry: Late Song, Lauris Edmond (Auckland University Press); Lucky Table, Vincent O'Sullivan (Victoria University Press); The Bells of Saint Babel's, Allen Curnow (Auckland University Press).

History & biography: Parihaka: The Art of Passive Resistance, edited by Te Miringa Hohaia, Gregory O'Brien, Lara Strongman (Victoria University Press); Pukaki: A Comet Returns, Paul Tapsell (Reed Publishing); Wrestling with the Angel: A Life of Janet Frame, Michael King (Viking).

Environment: Dancing Leaves: The story of New Zealand's cabbage tree, ti kouka, Philip Simpson (Canterbury University Press); Nature Guide to the New Zealand Forest, John Dawson, Rob Lucas (Godwit); Wellington's Heritage: Plants, gardens and landscape, Winsome Shepherd (Te Papa Press).

Lifestyle: Fresh, Julie Biuso, photography Ian Batchelor (New Holland Publishers); Gone Surfing: The Golden Years of Surfing in New Zealand, 1950-1970, Luke Williamson (Penguin Books); Grandparenting with Love and Laughter, Trish Gribben (Tandem Press).

Illustrative arts: Marti Friedlander Photographs, Ron Brownson (Godwit); Ralph Hotere: Black Light, general editor Ian Wedde (Te Papa Press and Dunedin
Public Art Gallery); West, Stanley Palmer (Godwit).