Montana New Zealand Book Awards - Biography - 2007 winner and finalists

The Montana New Zealand Book Awards are organised and administrated by Booksellers New Zealand, the trade association for booksellers and publishers.

Douglas Lilburn: His Life and Music Philip Norman, Canterbury University Press Winner

This salute to ‘the father of New Zealand composition’ offers fascinating insights into the world of New Zealand music, literature and fine art through the eyes and ears of one of our most creative sons, Douglas Lilburn. Affectionately written by composer and musicologist Philip Norman, the book is a happy blend of meticulous research and human-interest revelations from Lilburn’s personal papers.
Description from the publisher, Canterbury University Press

Brief Lives Chris Price, Auckland University Press

This collection is a genre-busting sequence of poetry and prose that confronts the place where mortality meets creativity. Using discontinuous narrative and alphabetical order, the author constructs a series of vignettes mixing biography, autobiography, arcane snippets of information, and meditations on life as performance. Written with great lucidity, this strange and captivating dictionary of fragments offers funny, thoughtful, and moving reflections on life, art, and the unknown.

A Life of J. C. Beaglehole, New Zealand Scholar Tim Beaglehole, Victoria University Press

A ‘dangerous young radical’ who spoke up for academic freedom and civil liberties during the depression in the 1930s and for some years was unable to find a permanent job, J.C. Beaglehole went on to become one of New Zealand’s greatest scholars, recognised particularly for his contribution to international scholarship through his editing of the journals of James Cook on his voyages of discovery, and for his biography of Cook. For this work he was awarded the Order of Merit by Queen Elizabeth II, the first New Zealander to be so honoured since Lord Rutherford.
Description from the publisher, Victoria University Press