Tuesday, July 28, 2009

Eleanor Catton's The Rehersal

Congratulations to my friend from school (oh-so-very long ago) Eleanor Catton, whose debut novel The Rehersal has won the best first book (fiction) catagory of the Montana New Zealand Book Awards.

2 comments:

Andrea said...

Yeah, The Rehearsal is such a great book - so great that she won. Perhaps your book will be in the Montana's next year.

They should perhaps make a small press category in it if they are thinking of making changes.

Ross Brighton said...

Ele is fantastic. I haven't read the novel yet, but I've read a couple of short stories, and am jealous. The only story I've written that has worked is the one in Prima Storia.

The book awards are a strange animal - Joanna Preston has an interesting post on the subject here:
http://jopre.wordpress.com/2009/06/09/book-awards-%e2%80%93-do-they-make-a-difference/
and how the costs involved in entering are often prohibitive for small-press publishers.

I think I may have to wait until I (fingers crossed) get a collection picked up by a University Press - and I have a feeling my work is a bit too out there even for AUP, let alone VUP or someone like that.