NZ author awarded Neustadt literature prize
23 Sep 2008
New Zealand author Patricia Grace has won the 2008 Neustadt International Prize for Literature.
Grace is the fourth woman to win the $US50,000 Neustadt laureate, widely considered to be the most prestigious literary award after the Nobel Prize for Literature.
The Neustadt International Prize for Literature is judged by an international jury, and is awarded biennially by the University of Oklahoma in conjunction with the international literary magazine, World Literature Today.
Nobel prizes have been awarded to 32 previous laureates, nominees and jurors.
An indigenous writer
The award was "a landmark recognition of an indigenous writer and gives a strong sense of the direction of important literature in the 21st century", said Neustadt professor and World Literature Today director Robert Con Davis-Undiano, who announced the 2008 Neustadt laureate.
Patricia Grace is a key figure in the emergence of Māori fiction in English since the 1970s and has made a significant contribution to contemporary New Zealand literature.
Exploring themes such as loss, isolation and family, Grace portrays Māori people and ways of life, and is notable for her versatile narrative and descriptive techniques.
She has written six novels, five short-story collections and a number of children's books. Her best-known novel Potiki (1986) won the New Zealand Book Award for Fiction, and has been translated into several languages.
A living icon of NZ art
In 2005 Patricia Grace was declared as a living icon of New Zealand art by the Arts Foundation of New Zealand. The recipient of several major New Zealand and international literary awards, she was honoured for her services to literature with a Distinguished Companion of the New Zealand Order of Merit in 2007.
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New Zealand author Patricia Grace has won the 2008 Neustadt International Prize for Literature.
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