Feminist-attack novel and wine atlas carry off top book awards

By MARGIE THOMSON

Aucklanders carried off both major prizes at this year's Montana Book Awards, presented by Prime Minister Helen Clark last night at Christchurch's Jade Stadium.

Delight greeted Stephanie Johnson's win of the $15,000 Deutz Medal for fiction for The Shag Incident. The novel is based on the notorious "Mervyn Thompson affair", when an Auckland playwright and academic was abducted and attacked by feminists who accused him of being a rapist.

Wine writer Michael Cooper won the $10,000 Montana Medal for non-fiction for his Wine Atlas of New Zealand. The judges said it was "unquestionably his magnum opus" and could not be improved on. "It is elegantly written, superbly designed and produced and its impact on the community has been considerable."

It was only the second time a lifestyle-category book had taken the big non-fiction prize. Heather Nicholson's book about knitting, The Loving Stitch, won in 1999. But Cooper is no stranger to top-flight recognition: in 1989, his Wines and Vineyards of New Zealand won a Goodman Fielder Wattie Award, a precursor to the Montanas.

A founder and creative director of the ever-growing Auckland Writers and Readers Festival, Johnson has become well known to Aucklanders. She has twice played bridesmaid at the Montanas: in 1999, when The Whistler was a semifinalist, and in 2001, when Belief was shortlisted but lost to Lloyd Jones' The Book of Fame.

This time, the judges described her as "clearly a writer at the peak of her profession. Already one of this country's most respected writers, she is fully deserving of the recognition of excellence that this award bestows".

The two runners-up for the fiction prize were Fiona Farrell's The Hopeful Traveller and Owen Marshall's When Gravity Snaps. Like The Shag Incident, these were published by Vintage.

The coveted Readers' Choice Award, voted on by booklovers who select from the 10 books shortlisted for the awards, was won by Northland poet/doctor Glenn Colquhoun for Playing God - the first time a book of poetry has won the award.

The Society of Authors awarded three prizes to first-time authors. The Hubert Church award for fiction went to Paula Morris for Queen of Beauty; the Jessie Mackay award for poetry went to Kay McKenzie Cooke for Feeding the Dogs; and the E. H. McCormick award for non-fiction went to sculptor Sam Mahon for The Year of the Horse.

"This year's entries have maintained the extremely high standards of past years and given New Zealanders yet another set of reasons to read and enjoy their own country's literature," said Helen Clark. Judges were publisher Brian Phillips and authors Marilyn Waring and Tony Simpson.